PURCHASING MANAGER, MORGAN TECHNICAL CERAMICS, 32

“Simply premier league” is how a former colleague describes Adam Smith. From February this year Smith has been purchasing manager at Morgan Technical Ceramics, responsible for all activities of a procurement team and leading a group purchasing project across five UK manufacturing sites.

Prior to this he held various roles at Ceramaspeed between 2005 and 2009, including North American purchasing manager and a commodity manager. This latter post saw him take responsibility for €14 million (£12.7 million) of commodity spend following the acquisition of a Polish company. At Ceramaspeed also set up a local purchasing team in Mexico to support the start-up of a plant. He managed and developed the supply base there and reduced freight costs by almost 25 per cent.

While working on the acquisition of the site in Poland Ceramaspeed went into administration and he was offered another role. His former boss adds: “It was the two parts of the business that Adam had been most heavily involved with (the Mexican and Polish plants) that proved attractive to buyers and were bought out of administration, the other plants going into insolvency.”