Cases
Print
Mercator Press
Harvesting savings through a comprehensive procurement strategy...
Company profile
- Top 3 player in the Commercial printing industry
- Belgium based with 3 sites in Belgium and France
- Turnover: € 85 000 000
- Employees: 250
Company challenge
- Suffering from major competitive pressure form large retail chains resulting in dumping prices
- Struggling with private ownership and 2nd generation succession
- Strong consolidation in supplier market and upwards price pressure on paper (responsible for over 50% of the companies costs)
- Unstable and unpredictable bottom line due to volatile supply prices
Our challenge
- Provide the company with bottom line breathing space
- Bring additional financial resources to:
- Invest in the market
- Deliver to the shareholders
- Install a contemporary purchasing organisation that:
- Is ready to add structural value to the company
- Goes beyond a one time “squeezing the supplier” exercise
- Is able to rebalance the purchasing power in favour of the company
Our approach
- Perform a purchasing spend analysis
- Identify saving opportunities and organisational missing links
- Propose, install and train a new organisation
- Select specific categories and perform full re-engineering based on a TCO approach (including financial, operational and qualitative parameters)
The results
- Reduction of the number of paper suppliers from 34 to 7
- Guaranteed below market average purchasing of paper fully consolidating on the buying power through a complete turnaround of the pricing mechanisms
- From a proposed price increase in pre-press material of +12% to a -2%. This within a monopolistic market
- with only three providers over the world.
- From no real purchasing department to a department with 3 fully skilled and trained professionals
