Anorganisation's expense can be categorised into three groups:
Fixed Costs - costs that do not change with output.
Variable Costs - costs that vary in direct proportion to output.
Semi-variable costs - costs that are a combination of the above, with both a fixed and variable element.
Among the four options:
"Land rental paid in advance": This is fixed cost. The rental won't increase when the production increases.
"Additional pallet hires due to higher demand in year-end season": This can be identified as semi-variable cost (or step cost).
"Governments taxes": The taxes are often levied by a percentage of income or revenue. Therefore, it is variable
"Raw materials for next year production": This is obviously variable cost.

The case in the question is illustrated as below:
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The equilibrium price initially at P0 with quantity Q0, when supply curve shifts to the left, it will converge with demand curve at new equilibrium pointwith price P1 and quantity Q1. As you can see from the graph, P1 is greater than P0 and Q1 is smaller than Q0.

Explanation
A supply curve will slope upward from left to right showing more supply at higher prices, as illustrated in the graph below:
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A movement along the supply curve will be brought about by a change in price, but a shift of the whole curve will be caused by a determinant other than price:
- The physical feasibility and time and energy required to produce the products
- Technology and innovation
- The objectives of the producers and their future expectations
- Prices of other goodsand services
- Government's policies
LO 2, AC 2.2

Supplier conditioning is the process of influencing a supplier or suppliers to behave in a certain way, or to accept certain circumstances. Within a negotiation, the buyer needs to make sure that the supplier has a number of messages in mind, about the outcomes that the buyer needs to achieve and about the shared sense of purpose that buying organisation has in achieving these outcomes.
Supplier appraisal is a process of evaluating a supplier's ability to carry out a contract in term of quality, delivery, price and other contributing factors.
Supplier positioning is the process of classifying spend with a supplier in terms of the profit potential and supply risk and assists in prioritising categories of spend and developing the rightstrategy.
Supplier selection is the process of selecting a supplier to acquire the necessary materials to support the outputs of organisations. Selection of the best and/or the most suitable suppliers is based on assessing supplier capabilities (Shih et al., 2004).

Explanation
The earlier procurement get involved in the procurement processes, the better. If procurement are involved in design at the specification stage they can feed in prices and costs to designer so they know the likely budget implication of choices made. Sending in a procurement team to negotiate at or close to the end ofthe procurement process effectively ties their hands and limits their negotiation leverage. This is illustrated in the graph below:
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LO 2, AC 2.1