Procurement and demand aggregation

Many orders, one negotiation

We are a procurement house. We take what our clients already buy, combine those requirements into a single larger order, and commit to suppliers and manufacturers on an annual basis. The rate that comes back is one no buyer in the group could have reached alone.

An illustration of how the business works. Four clients each need the same specification of nitrile examination glove: 120,000, 45,000, 310,000 and 88,000 units a year. Combined, that is a single order of 563,000 units, which is taken to market as one. The panel cycles through a worked example for eight of the categories we trade. All figures are illustrative.

£50m+
Placed with suppliers each year
14
Categories traded
8
Countries sourced from
32+
Supplier and manufacturer partners
The model

Buying power, assembled

Most buyers sit just below the volume at which a manufacturer becomes interested. The work is getting them over that line together.

01

Map the requirement

We take your current buying list, volumes, prices and terms, line by line.

02

Normalise the specification

Requirements are rewritten to a common specification so they can be combined.

03

Combine across the client base

Your volume joins everyone else’s, and stops being a small order.

04

Take the volume to market

We negotiate against the combined figure, often committing to an annual supply contract.

05

Verify before it ships

Factory audit, pre-production samples and pre-shipment inspection, before anything moves.

06

Deliver and hold the position

We handle freight, customs and stock, then re-test the rate rather than let it drift.

The difference

Not a broker

We buy, we do not introduce

A broker passes you to a supplier and takes a fee. We place the order, carry the commitment and own the relationship, which means we carry the risk that comes with it.

The commitment is the lever

Volume alone gets a better rate. Volume a manufacturer can plan a year around gets a materially better one. Where the numbers support it, we underwrite the year.

The range follows the clients

Every category we trade started as something a client asked for. We would rather build a new supply line than tell a client it is not what we do.

Proof, in the hardest category we trade

The group runs a working food wholesale operation under Flat Out Foods. Food has the thinnest margins, the highest order frequency and the least forgiving cold chain of anything in the portfolio, and a sourcing house that gets it wrong finds out within days.

It is the best evidence we have that the model holds up outside a slide deck.

More about the group

Send us what you buy today

Line items, annual volumes and the prices you are on. We will tell you where we can improve the position, and where we cannot.