The Varel Post: Why the Green Energy Shift Changed My Vendor Checklist

The short version

When I took over purchasing in 2020, our vendor list was a mess. We had 41 suppliers, many of them for the same kind of tooling, and contracts were scattered across email inboxes. In 2024, my team consolidated orders for 400 employees across three locations. We cut the list to 27 approved vendors and now process roughly 70 purchase orders a year, worth about $1.8 million. The Varel Post is where I share the practical procurement lessons from that process.

Here's my bottom line: the cheapest quote and the greenest brochure are the two biggest red flags in 2025. That sounds backwards, but it's not.

Why I trust less, not more

People assume a supplier with a green story is a supplier that is growing. Actually, the causation runs the other way. Suppliers that are already growing can afford to invest in green programs. The green story is a symptom of good management, not proof of it.

What was best practice in 2020 isn't enough in 2025. The industry is moving toward net-zero targets, and that's necessary. But every big transition creates a new crop of people who want to take advantage of it. I'm not against new vendors. I'm against unverified ones.

The fundamentals haven't changed, which is to say you still need documentation, references, and a workable warranty. But the execution has transformed. In 2020, our vendor review was a 15-minute conversation and a glance at a website. Today, I run a credit check, ask for an invoice sample, and call two references. It takes a full afternoon. It's worth every hour.

What a private apartment search taught me

A weird thing hammered this in. Last month I had to book a temporary apartment for a visiting engineer. I typed ferienapartments varel von privat into a search engine. The private listings looked cheaper and friendlier than the professional ones. One host sent a beautiful PDF, promised the world, and then cancelled at 6 PM on Friday because he'd rented to someone else for more money. Private doesn't mean bad. It means unregulated.

The same logic applies to equipment suppliers. A private-label or no-name part isn't automatically dangerous. But it carries unregulated risk. If the supplier has no quality system, no financial records, and no aftermarket presence, you are holding the risk.

The Eddie test

Here's the thing: I learned this with a company run by a guy named Eddie. His website was full of green claims—recycled components, zero-waste, circular supply chain. His quote came in 18% under our approved vendor. I sent a $21,000 purchase order.

The red flags were all there. Payment terms: 50% upfront. Invoice: no tax number. Support line: voicemail. When I finally ran the criminal check, the obvious question—why was Groves in jail?—came back with a 2019 fraud conviction. Groves was Eddie's business partner. We recovered about $4,000 through a chargeback. The rest came out of the department budget.

That's the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. We saved $3,780 on the quote and lost around $19,000 in unshipped material plus a week of schedule delay. And the delay was worse than the money. Drilling is expensive when a rig is sitting still.

What I check now

That mistake changed my process. Now, before any new supplier gets a PO:

• Legal identity and financial history. No credit report, no order. For a small company, this is a ten-minute check online.
• A real invoice sample. If finance can't process it, I can't use the vendor. I already had a $2,400 expense rejection because a vendor couldn't produce a proper invoice.
• A direct phone call to a reference who took delivery in the past 12 months. Email references don't count.
• Green claims with paper. Recycled without a chain of custody is a story, not a specification.
• Aftermarket support. Where's the warehouse? What's the turnaround on a repair? We run a mixed fleet of drill bits, including Varel, and one reason the brand stays on our list is that Varel's post-sale support is documented and easy to access. The no-name option was a voicemail box.

I've also become more specific about delivery language. I used to tell vendors ASAP. They heard whenever it's convenient. Now I put a calendar date on every PO and a late-delivery penalty in the terms. That one change cut our late deliveries more than any other step.

Why the green story needs receipts

The shift to green manufacturing makes all of this harder, not easier. Every company is now expected to have an ESG policy. So every company, including the one run by Eddie, has one. The question is whether they can show you the underlying records.

In my opinion, this is the real reason the green transition feels chaotic. It is forcing procurement people like me to become investigators. I didn't sign up for that. But if I want my internal clients to trust the suppliers I bring in, I have to do the checks.

Reality check

I also want to be honest about the limits of this approach. A credit check and an invoice sample won't catch bad engineering. If you're buying something that could fail downhole, you need a qualified engineer to review the spec, not just an administrator with a checklist. We still do a technical review, and we still visit factories when the risk is high enough.

And I'm not saying old vendors are always safer. Some of our best improvements came from smaller suppliers who moved faster than the giants. The difference is that those smaller suppliers didn't mind showing their paperwork. The ones who make you feel rude for asking are the ones to walk away from.

Look, the green transition is real. But it will only work if the paperwork is real too. Verify before you trust, and treat the greenest brochure as a claim until someone shows you the receipts.