Niels R. Martin
Niels Martin has over 30 years of experience in Manufacturing, Procurement, Operations, Business Development and Quality in the Food and Beverage, Consumer Packaged Goods, Aerospace & Defense, Electronics, Heavy Manufacturing, Distribution and Logistics Industries. His unique blend of technical and commercial skills, experience as an entrepreneur and exposure to various industries and markets has him well-positioned to identify opportunities and create value across various business models. He has lived/worked in over a dozen countries (not counting his home country of Texas) and is multi-lingual and multi-cultural.
Prior to founding OptiSource Solutions, Mr. Martin was the Director of Technical Procurement at Nestlé and had responsibility for the procurement of technical goods and services across all North American facilities, with responsibility for several global categories, managing spend of over five hundred million dollars annually.
Mr. Martin was initially recruited by Nestlé to initiate the coordination of procurement of Capital Equipment across its North American operations, which also led to his involvement as a member of the design and construction team for Nestle’s state-of-the-art infant formula manufacturing facility in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and for Nestle’s Stouffer’s frozen food manufacturing plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas — where he also negotiated the design/build contract for this facility which was at the time Nestlé’s largest single investment to-date in a new facility. This facility provided unique technical and commercial challenges, incorporating a groundbreaking ammonia/CO2 cascade refrigeration system which has proved to be a model for subsequent installations.
Niels was subsequently asked to lead the Indirect Procurement organization at Nestlé Mexico in Mexico City where he championed the reorganization of both the Indirect and Direct Procurement organizations. He also transitioned all indirect spend from antiquated systems and processes to an integrated e-commerce based platform and kicked off a regional (North and South America) procurement strategy for several common spend categories that would later develop into global approaches.
Upon his return to the United States, Niels was chosen to lead a Shared Services project focusing on Technical and Logistics spend across North America, and to subsequently develop the processes, structure and organization that would result in a permanent Shared Services Organization. He conceived and led a company-wide effort towards common parts numbering and nomenclature to support optimization of technical inventories and improved maintenance practices as well as an approach towards systems and processes which would support those efforts. He also developed and led a global technical procurement effort that resulted in the establishment of global governance of several spend categories of several hundred million dollars annually under his direction.
Prior to his ten years with Nestlé, Mr. Martin’s career includes experience in large corporations and as an entrepreneur. He also spent two years (taking time off from his university studies) serving as a volunteer missionary in South Africa where he became responsible for all missionary efforts in the Orange Free State Province.
His professional career began with an assignment in France with Case-Poclain, the French construction equipment subsidiary of J.I. Case (now CNH Global N.V.), where, as an intern, he redesigned the end-of-line quality inspection process at the Crépy-en-Valois manufacturing facility, saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. He later worked as a Procurement Engineer in the Aerospace / Defense Electronics industry with Texas Instruments Missile Systems Division (now Raytheon), focused on Supplier Development and development of second sources for critical sub-components and assemblies in support of the transition of development project towards low-scale and full-rate production.
Niels eventually left Texas Instruments to start Oregon Pacific Bottling Company — a water bottling business which he grew into a regional brand with international distribution which he operated until he was recruited by Nestlé.
Mr. Martin has extensive experience living and working overseas and is fluent in Afrikaans, French and Spanish. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a Harvard Law Program on Negotiations – trained professional negotiator. Niels and his wife Julie live in Lantana, Texas (in the Dallas-Forth Worth Metroplex). They have four grown children and are active in church and community activities.
In addition to his business activities, Mr. Martin enjoys restoring classic automobiles (primarily 1950s-era Ford Motor Company products), traveling with his wife and language study (he is currently learning Hawaiian). He is also a student pilot.
