Most people chasing a career in commodities think trading houses first. Banks second. Maybe a big FMCG manufacturer if they’re feeling creative.

Retailers? Rarely.

But Anthony Britton, commodity risk professional who’s worked at Tesco, Unilever, and now Swiss retail giant Migros, makes a compelling case that the retail side of the commodity world is one of the most complex, fastest-evolving, and frankly underappreciated corners of the industry.

In the latest episode of Strong Source, The Commodity Podcast, Anthony joined hosts Martijn Bron and Alexander Sterk for a candid conversation about building commodity risk functions inside large corporations, navigating market crises from a corporate desk, and what it actually takes to build a career in this space.


Here’s what stood out.

Why retailers have more commodity exposure than you think

When you picture commodity trading, a supermarket probably doesn’t come to mind. But Anthony breaks down why that’s a mistake.

Retailers carry three broad categories of commodity exposure: energy and fuel (shared with most large physical businesses), raw materials embedded in branded products on-shelf, and, most importantly, the raw materials inside their private label products.

That third category is where the real action is.

“Private label is the more interesting side for retail if you’re coming in from a commodity risk management perspective… you can build sophistication. You have a lot of flexibility in the type of strategies you want to deploy.”

With branded products, a retailer has almost no visibility into how, say, Nestlé or Unilever is managing their cocoa exposure. It’s confidential. You can’t influence it. You just negotiate once a year and hope for the best.

Private label is different. When your logo is on the packet, you control the supply chain. And that control creates real opportunity, both to manage costs and to gain negotiating leverage on the branded side too.

The volatility problem

Anthony’s career has run almost perfectly parallel to the most disruptive commodity events of the past decade.

He joined Unilever’s vegetable oils desk in early 2022, just as the Ukraine invasion sent sunflower and soybean oil into one of the most bullish runs in history. He then picked up the cocoa book in late 2023, right before prices went parabolic.

His observation is sharp: “Suddenly you have very senior people calling you up on a daily basis. At the same time you’re trying to manage a position.”

That tension, between executing in a fast-moving market and keeping senior stakeholders informed and calm, is something most trading house professionals never have to deal with at the same intensity. In a corporate, you’re simultaneously the market expert, the communicator, and often the person responsible for buying approvals before you can act.

And yet, he frames it not as pressure, but as opportunity:

“Maybe I saw it from a different perspective… this is a career-defining moment. To try and guide the business through this process.”

What retail teams are actually building right now

At Migros, Anthony leads a newly created, centralized commodity team, a setup that gives a revealing look at where retail commodity functions are heading.

The starting point? Mapping exposures.

At first glance that might sound basic. But in a retailer with tens of thousands of SKUs, figuring out where your actual commodity exposure sits is genuinely complex. Sugar, for example, shows up in hundreds of product, but as Anthony explains, it may be so diffuse across the supply chain that there’s no practical way to manage it as a single position.

Cocoa is the opposite. Concentrated in chocolate products, it becomes something you can actually hedge and manage strategically.

“When you aggregate it, you may sometimes be surprised at where the exposures are. And some of them you can operationally find a way to manage, and some of them you can’t.”

The approach Anthony advocates: an 80/20 mindset. Identify where exposures are large and concentrated enough to act on, and focus your energy there.

The case for index-linked contracts

One of the more practical threads in the conversation is Anthony’s view on supply contracts.

His position is clear: wherever possible, contracts should be linked to a futures reference price or benchmark. Not because it makes things simpler, it doesn’t, but because it makes your exposure manageable as a single position.

“You want to be able to manage it as one exposure, ideally… you want to manage that in a way where you are talking about one market that has one price.”

This is increasingly common at sophisticated FMCG manufacturers, but retailers are earlier in the journey. Building that infrastructure, the right contract structures, the right supplier relationships, the right internal processes, is exactly the kind of foundational work Anthony is doing at Migros.

What makes someone stand out in commodity risk

Anthony’s answer to the “what do you look for in talent” question is one of the more direct you’ll hear:

“The very first thing I always look for is a combination of analytical skills and passion for this career path, because if you have those, they’ll give you the motivation and enthusiasm you need to grow and develop all the skills you need to be successful.”

Beyond that, he identifies two traits that separate people who progress from those who plateau:

Communication. Not in a vague sense, but specifically the ability to walk into a room of non-commodity people and convey a clear narrative, what’s happening, what the scenarios are, what the plan is. He’s seen it over and over: the most senior people are almost always the most concise communicators.

Ownership. Taking full responsibility for outcomes, not waiting to be managed. In a function where you might be the only person in the building who understands what’s happening in the cocoa market, that ownership matters enormously.

Trading house or corporate? an honest take

The question comes up often: if you’re good at commodity risk in a corporate, why wouldn’t you move to a trading house where the upside is higher?

Anthony’s answer is nuanced. Yes, the bonus potential is different. But the corporate route offers something else, breadth. A portfolio of multiple commodities, a mix of analytical, commercial, and stakeholder management skills, and the kind of seniority that comes with being one of very few genuine experts in a complex organization.

“If you are senior in the world of commodity risk management at a corporate, you are very much in demand… you have leverage when it comes to compensation as well.”

And movement goes both ways. Plenty of people leave trading companies for corporate roles, for the flexibility, the broader skill set, and, as he puts it, because people in corporate environments tend to be “quite a bit nicer.”

The bottom line

Anthony Britton’s career is a case study in an underexplored career path, one where commodity expertise meets corporate complexity, and where the real challenge isn’t finding a trade, but building an entire function from the ground up inside a business that didn’t used to think it needed one.

As commodity volatility continues to press on margins, the retailers and manufacturers who invest in these capabilities will have a structural edge over those who don’t.

That’s the bet Anthony has made. And given what’s happened to commodity markets over the last few years, it’s hard to argue with it.

This post is based on our conversation with Anthony Britton in Episode 31 of Strong Source, The Commodity Podcast.

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