Welcome to the Bunzl Insight event focused on Continental Europe. My name is Alberto Grau. I'm the Managing Director of Continental Europe. I'm hosting this event from this fantastic experience center in Arnhem in our facility of retail and industry in the Netherlands. I joined the group 14 years ago as an MD in Spain, and in 2018, I moved my family to Amsterdam to run our Continental Europe business. I have with me today Wilbert. Wilbert was part of the management team that sold the business back in 2005. In 2018, since then, he's running successfully the Bunzl Retail & Industry business. He's one of the ex-executives with the best commercial capabilities that I've ever seen. He will explain afterwards how we add value to our customers. I've got Erik.
Erik joined us two years ago. He was running the digital innovation at ERIKS. ERIKS was a B2B industrial supply distributor, and he's an example of the high caliber talent that we look to join the group with shared values and with entrepreneurial background. He's helping me to drive the digital transformation now here in Continental Europe. Both are good example of the high quality of expertise of the people in leadership roles here in the group. We have together 50 years of combined experience at Bunzl. Today, we will give you insight into Bunzl's growth model and how we have applied successfully in Continental Europe, how our value-added solutions and customer propositions drive sustainable returns, and our successful acquisition growth strategy and the future opportunities in this area.
By looking at the Continental Europe growth track record, we see that since 2004, we have delivered a strong revenue growth. We have multiplied by 5 the size of the business at 10% compound annual growth rate. Organic growth has been responsible for one-third of this growth. Thanks to our value-added offering, which enhance the relationship with our customers and make them stickier. Elements like expertise, sustainability, global sourcing capabilities have been absolutely key to make this happen. Acquisition growth has contributed two-thirds to this growth. Acquiring good businesses and help them and support them to keep growing has been also very relevant. In this period, our operating profit has grown by 13% CAGR and our operating margin by 320 basis points, mainly driven by great performance, operational excellence, and good portfolio management.
We put the first flag in Continental Europe back in 1994 with the acquisition of Hopa Disposables. It was a family-owned successful business engaged in the distribution of food service packaging and supplies for the hospitality sector. It was in 2005 when Continental Europe became a dedicated business area. At that moment in time, we have eight presence in eight countries. We normally classify our acquisitions in two categories, anchor acquisitions and bolt-on acquisitions. Anchor acquisitions are those that allows us to enter into a new country or a new sector. Bolt-on means an expanding into an existing sector. Until 2005, the majority of the acquisitions were anchor acquisitions entering into new countries.
However, since 2005, we have accelerated our growth, not only expanding into new countries, but more importantly, expanding in existing countries. Since 2005, we have acquired 56 companies out of the 66 we have acquired since 1994. Today, we have presence in 16 countries through 52 operating companies across our six core market sectors. We have 5,600 colleagues. 2,000 of them are focusing on engaging with customers, on supporting them, on providing them value added and expertise. We supply our customers from more than 100 locations. Bunzl leaders with their teams are responsible, are the drivers of our growth. They are responsible of this good track record because they have the market intelligence, they have the customer relationships, they have the local knowledge to understand the dynamics in the markets in which they operate.
We've built a strong and capable management team. Today, almost 50% of the managers in Continental Europe are ex-owners who are coming through acquisitions. This has helped us to make what we call the secret sauce, which is the mix between the ex-owners with this founder's mentality, mindset, and executives with wider corporate experience. This is a powerful combination. In a decentralized organization, I think it's absolutely key to have high caliber people running the local business with this entrepreneurial mindset. Acquisitions has been a great source of talent, and employees from the acquired companies have a good opportunity to grow their careers within a bigger company. Also ex-owners have the best place to keep doing what they did in the past with the autonomy, but with the autonomy of the past, but with the support of the global scale.
Retaining and developing these people, the people that we bring through acquisitions, is absolutely key. One example is Wilbert. We focus on operating at local level to serve individual customers' needs because our customers, even if they are global, they operate locally. We are decentralized, and we have this commercial agility. We capture value from being decentralized with this agility. At the same time, we have the global scale. Global scale backs our local approach by providing financial support to invest in sustainability to bring great people to invest in digital technologies. We provide as well operational expertise to allow the businesses to be more efficient, right? We normally consolidate to integrate back office, for example, within different companies within the same country, or if it makes sense, we can consolidate business or consolidate warehouses.
For example, since 2010, we have relocated and consolidated 47 warehouses into fewer and more efficient locations. Finally, the acquisition support. I mean, our central team, corporate development team, help our local business to execute and close acquisitions. We are very experienced in managing this balance between the centralized and global scale support. The benefits of scale, along with the autonomy and the freedom, is a fantastic selling point when we approach potential targets to acquire. In summary, this strong growth track record with the entrepreneurial leadership team in a decentralized organization, enhanced and supported by the global scale with a very well diversified by geography and by market sector, has resulted in a very resilient business that generated last year GBP 2 billion. It is important to mention that our low buyer concentration helps maintain high margins.
We deliver strong returns while we see significant opportunities for growth organically and by acquisitions. Before I hand over to Wilbert, I just wanted to remind you that we provide products and solutions that go beyond the unit cost of the product. This is key for our value creation. Our customers are medium to large customers, and we work closely with them to help them to solve their real challenges. Our customers, we are expert in our field, and they rely on us because of this knowledge. We co-develop with them. We innovate with them to find the right solution to each specific need. It is important for you to know that we provide essential products for our customers to operate. Without our products, our customers, they cannot run their businesses.
In the car industry, they call this type of products line stoppers. Elements like expertise, reliability, and high field rates are absolutely key for our customers and are central elements in our value proposition. Now we are going to talk about the value-added solutions and how this drives value to us and to our customers. To do this, we will focusing on Wilbert's business. Over to you, Wilbert.
Yeah. Thank you, Alberto. Now I want to show you how the added value services we provide to our customers have driven great returns in our business. I am the MD for Bunzl Retail & Industry, which is one of the eight operating companies in the Netherlands. We supply a wide range of business critical non-food essentials to various end customer markets. I was part of the leadership team that sold the business back in 2005, and since then, we have completed two bolt-on acquisitions, Janssen Packaging in 2015 and recently, AFL Groep. Today, the business has a revenue of around GBP 130 million and has delivered constant organic profit growth. Critical for achieving this growth is that customers trust us to be able to supply them with the essential products. We are an extension of their strategic team.
Our value-added proposition goes beyond just the delivery of products. A product can be substituted, but our concept is second to none. Knowledge, expertise, and product innovation is cemented in our sourcing. We have 33 category specialists and category managers and over 400 relationships. This is key to being able to bring the right solutions to our customers. Innovation is key. We consolidate orders in a very efficient way. For example, our top 10 customers order on average 728 SKUs. Today, over 80% of all the orders we receive from customers are received digitally. We make things easy for them, and we deliver reliably. These essential products have to arrive at the customer at the right time, regardless of the challenges in the supply chain.
So far this year, we have made 99% on time in full despite the global supply chains challenges. This demonstrates the strength of our commitment. These elements are the basis of the proposition we provide to our customers. Truly understanding our customers and their challenges is then key to be able to provide solutions they really value. This drives our growth and returns. Firstly, we build close and long-lasting relationships with them. On average, our top 20 customers are with us for 17 years and a senior sales team for over 12 years. We have a strong connection with the decision-makers, and we have become very relevant to them. We make sure that we understand their challenges and provide solutions, and therefore, we held in-depth interviews with most of their decision-makers.
We are able to analyze customer challenges in detail and use the data to offer the best possible solutions. We also hold regular in-house workshops to train their teams. We are a highly innovative business, working closely together with customers and suppliers. We co-create and develop with our customers and suppliers. The value of this is demonstrated in the high proportion of packaging made from alternative sustainable materials. Approximately 65% of our product range. Sustainability is a key strategic pillar for Bunzl and a key differentiator for our customers. Our innovation cycle goes that fast that every single year, 25% of our product range is being renewed. One such innovative solution is endless cardboard.
This addresses the problem of a customer who was using generic, poorly sized boxes for their products, and this has generated a lot of excess waste in cardboard, and their deliveries were poorly optimized as we were delivering boxes that contained too much air in it. The endless cardboard solution, which you are going to see later, was reducing the air in the boxes with over 30%, and automation was saving the customer on labor cost. To protect our innovative solution, we went into an exclusive three-way agreement with the machine supplier and the customer, and the total savings mount up to one-third of the packaging spend and one-third of the carbon footprint. We are excited to help our customers with their sustainability journey. What's in it for Bunzl?
Through these kinds of innovations, we increase our share of wallet with the customer at higher margins, win new business rapidly, and increase customer stickiness. Another great example is CEVA Logistics, a large third-party logistics company in the Netherlands. It's a customer for 16 years already, but it has been accelerating in the last couple of years. Previously, their 100+ warehouses were sourcing products themselves, using hundreds of suppliers, including Bunzl. The management of CEVA had no control on their packaging spend, poor product availability, and no support on their sustainability targets. We went, in 2017, into a master agreement, Bunzl becoming their sole supplier for over 1,000 SKUs in 12 different product categories across all their warehouses. Through innovation, we have saved them significant amounts of cost and carbon emissions by using our Bunzl scale and expertise.
The availability of products has gone up significantly to almost 100%. They rely on us for our packaging expertise, and we even partner with them to leverage their customer base whilst fueling our own organic growth. They have recorded a video, and what you're about to see is how they experience working with us.
CEVA and Bunzl are working together for more than 10 years. We started at individual sites and are now working together since 2017 in a master framework agreement. Bunzl delivers at CEVA packaging solutions. You can think about cardboard, foil, labels, filling materials, et cetera. We value in the relationship with Bunzl that they are a total solution supplier. They think with us, they supply not only the product but also see at sites what we need. CEVA is growing, and Bunzl helps us in that growth. They look with us to the best solution for the customer, and they are flexible in up and down scaling when the customer demand is changing. CEVA is a sustainable company. We are energy neutral, and we are asking our suppliers to think with us in sustainability.
Bunzl and CEVA are acting together in improving our sustainability related to packaging. An example for that is looking at the consumption of packaging material. Less is more, so we are looking at getting air out of the package, and Bunzl is supporting CEVA in getting the right packaging solution with less air. An example of sustainable packaging can be other types of cardboard or a stronger foil with less plastic. Bunzl and CEVA meet on a regular basis on-site but also on head office. In the cooperation with Bunzl, we developed together a business intelligence tool. It talks about how much packaging material is used, what developments are in kilograms, but also in turnover, and it helps us in managing our business together. For CEVA, Bunzl is not a supplier, but we are working in partnerships. Bunzl is our gateway to the packaging world.
They got the knowledge of the market, they got the knowledge of the suppliers, and we depend on their knowledge and flexibility to get the right solution delivered.
We have proven that if you add the right value for your customer, you can double your profit in five years' time, and that's exactly what we did. We will continuously focus on innovation to keep on delivering these impressive growth rates. Thank you very much. Now, Erik will tell you more about the way we use digital solutions to enhance our value proposition and increase customer stickiness.
Thank you very much, Wilbert, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm very happy with this opportunity to tell you more about our digital transformation journey. As Alberto already mentioned, I joined Bunzl two years ago. What I noticed from day one is the eagerness of local management to use technology to improve customer relationships, to make our operations more efficient, and also to anticipate fast on a market that was changing faster and faster. That's good. That is the fundament of a digital transformation. What I also saw is the fact that every company had different needs, mostly based on different stages of maturity, but also on different market dynamics, and that's okay. We just need to take that into account. What we also have is this one thing that bonds all the different Bunzl companies.
We are all distribution companies, so the business model and the main processes, they are the same. What I see in every company where I come is that pragmatic, down-to-earth, execution-driven mindset, and that's something that we can work with. What we did is we talked to all the local managers, and we asked them, "What digital solutions could have the biggest impact on your local strategic plan?" We gathered all that information, and that was our basis. What we then did to help them to build local road maps and also to monitor progress, we grouped all those initiatives and ideas in three different buckets. Bucket number one contained all the customer-facing projects. All the projects and initiatives that are around the ease of doing business with Bunzl for the customer. It's things like elimination of potential friction points.
It's about self-service solutions for the customers, but also how to facilitate easy communication and collaboration. All these initiatives, they can have a direct impact on our organic growth, but mostly on our customer retention. Because also, the more we can integrate into the process of our customers, the stickier our relationship and our concept will become for those customers. The second bucket contained all the initiatives that were around operational efficiency. How can we make our processes more effective, efficient, reliable, but also flexible, so we can anticipate fast on even faster changing market circumstances? One project I would like to mention there, it's a move that we are doing from the traditional rigid monolithic systems to a best-of-breed solution. For every core process, we want to have the best digital solution in the market.
We need to glue it together through a very flexible API architecture so that we can easily connect those. Because by doing this, we allow all our local opcos to make use of best-in-class technology, easily connected to their local ERP. Because of that, the fact that we have 34 different ERPs, it does not hinder us anymore. We can flexibly link them to each other, and it will also allow all our companies to make use of those best-in-class solutions that they normally would not be able to afford or implement. That's a very important project for us. The third bucket contains all the projects that are around data analytics and new insights. When you look internally in Bunzl, it mostly means focusing on the right things through fact-driven decision-making.
If you look at our customers, that's about creating new value by bringing new insights to the customers, and that could even lead to new business models or new business concepts. What we see in every company is that they need a different blend of initiatives in those three buckets. By creating a community and creating transparency over all those different projects, what we now see is that people start to share their experiences but also start to copy. That's very important to make our digital transformation scalable. We see that this approach works within Bunzl. Bunzl companies like to learn from each other, but mostly try to reuse what somebody else already has invented. This makes it for us scalable.
I do not want to go deep in technology today, but we want to show you some examples of digital solutions so you have a flavor of what kind of projects we are running. The first one, it's around webshops. We have more than 50 webshops out there, each focusing on a certain customer behavior in a certain local market. A webshop shows all the products that we sell in that market. It gives all the product information, it shows the net prices for the customers, stock availability, alternative products, and customers can then buy online and pay immediately through credit cards, or they can take the traditional payment terms that they already have in the offline channels. For the bigger customers, this does not work. They've got complex buying processes, and we need to integrate in their processes to add value.
For those customers, we built brand shops. Let me explain what it is with an example from citizenM. citizenM is a fast-growing hotel chain in Europe and America, and we supply all of their hotels. When one of the hotels want to place an order, they don't have to look for the webshop of Bunzl. In their own intranet, they've got a link, they just click it, and then automatically they see a webshop that's adapted for them. It's with a citizenM logo, it's with their colors, and they can only see the products that have been pre-listed for their hotel. It's super easy for them to find the right products and just order it, saying what quantity they need, press enter, and it's done. What happens then is we then take that order, but we feed it first in the procurement system of citizenM.
There they do then the authorization flow, they do the cost allocation, and then they send the order in a digital format back to Bunzl. We then process it, and we deliver the right products to the right hotels. What actually happened here is that citizenM outsourced their entire procurement system to Bunzl worldwide. What we then give them is full compliance to the assortments that we pre-discussed with central purchasing and link that with our worldwide logistics, and also we feed them with information about usage per hotel. For them, it's a complete solution. The aim for citizenM is to manage the entire supply chain worldwide for all the essentials with one FTE, and they depend on Bunzl to do all the rest. That's what this project is all about.
For Bunzl, this means it's a fast-growing account and with a very good lock-in because we go very deep in their processes. At the same time, due to that compliance to the pre-registered article list, we can also avoid any contract spill locally in the different hotels. It's a clear win-win. In the next example, we even go one step further. This is a project with PostNL. PostNL is a mail and parcel corporation, and their core business is to collect and to drop parcels. Now, a parcel has products, and they need to be protected in an envelope or in a box. What PostNL wanted to do, they wanted to give extra value to their customers, and they also wanted to offer those packaging materials. PostNL is not a specialist in packaging. They're also not a specialist in distribution.
They reached out to Bunzl, and they asked whether we could set up a partnership there. What we did is we built a webshop for PostNL in their logo, in their colors, and we integrated it in their website. The PostNL customers, they think they're shopping at PostNL, but we maintain the platform, we do the category management, we do the buying, the stocking, and the picking. PostNL will collect products, and they will drop it at the customers. We've got a clear win-win here because PostNL now can give an extra value to their customers, and for Bunzl, we can leverage on the customer base of PostNL and reach out to their market. PostNL actually does the marketing for us, and we can sell directly.
PostNL is so happy with this project in Holland that they recently also rolled it out to Belgium. It's a new country for us. It's a new language for this webshop, but it went very fluently. The two next examples, they are more about data and insights. On purpose, we took two examples around sustainability because sustainability is so important for Bunzl and for our customers. As you probably know, we have labeled most of our products according to their ecological impact. Based on that information, we can make reports, we can make simulations, but also suggestions to our customers to reduce their product footprint. We're not gonna present that today because we already presented this solution previously, but we'll take a similar solution, and this goes then about when we ship the goods from our warehouses to the facilities of our customers.
It's about the delivery emissions or the Scope 3 sustainability projects. Let me show you the example that we have in Spain with the carbon footprint efficiency tool. It was actually a solution that we already had in the U.K. We copied it, but we adapted it for the needs for the Spanish market. We also certified it officially so that all the outcomes would also have real value for our customers, and they could also lean on that information. What we did is we mapped all the delivery routes between our warehouse and the facilities of our customers, and in this case, in this example, it was a big restaurant chain in Spain. With that restaurant chain, we have about 2,000 deliveries a year. About 15% of those deliveries were for orders less than 60 EUR.
It's a lot of emissions for very small packages. Just by making those reports, by making it visible, and by talking to the customer, they wanted to reduce that footprint, and they changed their behavior, and they started to combine small packages into a bigger one. What we see already after six months is a reduction of 10% of the emissions, so of the CO2 footprint. That's good results that we already have in a short period. Also for Bunzl, it's very good because now we have a higher average order value, and it means that we can improve our logistics and our picking and packing. What we often see here is that contribution to a better world goes hand in hand also with an improvement of our processes. It's a win-win.
The last example that we want to show is an example from France, from PLG. It's about industrial laundry service. Imagine mid-sized hospitals, hotels, et cetera, who do their own laundry. They've got some industrial laundry machines. They got barrels or bottles with detergent and with disinfection products. In the middle, there's a dosing system that will inject the right liquids into the laundry machine during the washing procedure. Now, what we see in reality is that often the customer has to do a rewash because the quality of the laundry is not good enough, and it can have different reasons. They have to do a rewash, and that means losing time, under capacity of the machines, too much water because of two washes, and also too much electricity.
What our colleagues from PLG did, they did set up an experiment to put sensors into the dosing system so that remotely we could monitor what's going on. When we see that something is going wrong, we could immediately reach out to the customer to do the necessary things, and it could be like changing the barrel or whatever. If the dosing system needs maintenance, we could immediately plan a scheduled maintenance. What we saw is immediately the number of rewashes went down. The quality of the washing went up. The customer is saving time. The customer is saving money. What does that mean for Bunzl? Again, it's a sticky model. We don't just deliver the products. We monitor the quality of their activities. It also creates independence for us, for the different detergent brands.
What we also see is a higher consumption because the customers were not putting enough disinfection products into the laundry washing procedure, meaning that the quality was not good enough. What we also see is that we have three times less maintenance that we have to do because now we only need to go there physically when we really need to do maintenance. Again, a clear example that contributing to a better world goes hand in hand with operational improvements to the model and also a growth driver for Bunzl. These were some examples just to give you a flavor about the kind of digital projects that we're running within Bunzl. I will give the word back to Alberto, who will talk about growth opportunities for Bunzl Continental Europe based on our acquisition strategy.
Thank you, Eric. Well, we have seen with these examples the strength of our business, and now we will talk about the opportunities through acquisitions. This slide shows the scale of the opportunity for growth we have in Continental Europe based on the size in revenue in each market compared to the GDP in each specific market, and having as a benchmark our business in U.K. and Ireland. Just by matching the ratio revenue GDP that we have in our business in U.K. and Ireland, we could almost triple the size of Continental Europe. It's a massive opportunity to grow. The right-hand map shows a fuller breakdown of the opportunity.
of the markets, of some markets where we have the opportunity to at least double the size of the business. The bubble, the blue bubble means reflects the size of the market in revenue. The green bubble is the size of the opportunity. Looking at the three largest economies in Europe, we can see that in Spain, we could be 2x larger. In Germany, where we have recently acquired a company that has allowed to double the size of the business, we could be 8x larger. In Italy, we could be 15x larger. It's a huge opportunity for growth in Continental Europe by acquisition according to this model. This diagram, you might be familiar with this, the dot diagram, because it shows highlights the sectors we are in in the countries where we have presence.
When we see the opportunities to grow through acquisition, we see mainly three routes. The first one is filling the white spots in the diagram. Because we have only two countries, Netherlands and Switzerland, with operation across all six sectors. A huge opportunity just by filling the gaps. Second is increasing the share in those sectors where we are in the countries where we have presence, right? It would be graphically to making these dots bigger. Here I will give you some color with some examples in the three main businesses we have in Continental Europe. In France represents 30% of the total revenue in Continental Europe. We are the leading player in the cleaning and hygiene sector. However, we have significant opportunity to keep consolidating our safety business.
To increase our presence in the healthcare, which is limited today. In the Netherlands, with a more, let's say, balanced portfolio of market sectors, our cleaning and hygiene business represent less than 50% of our business in the Netherlands. A huge opportunity to increase our presence there. We are seeing a growing opportunity as well in what we call specialist packaging. In Spain, we are the leading player in the cleaning and hygiene sector. That is so fragmented that is still a further opportunity to keep consolidating that market and also to increase our presence in the healthcare sector, where we have only one company today. The third avenue is to enter into a new countries, so what we call distribution-ready countries, and we highlight here four of them, which are Poland, Sweden, Portugal, and Finland.
Acquisition pipeline is driven by our local MDs. The majority of deal generation is done locally. We build long-term relationship with our potential targets, so it can take years for the deal to materialize. During this process, we build progressively trust and this emotional connection, which is absolutely key and relevant for a family-owned business to sell their company. During this period, they understand the value of joining Bunzl. Managing pipeline is a key topic in our management review meeting, so we monitor frequently the pipeline and the engagement with all the targets. Today, what we call the active pipeline is made of 150 targets with a combined revenue of almost EUR 8 billion.
They are medium-term time frames, so most of these companies today are not for sale, but they will be for sale in the mid-term, right? Beyond that active pipeline, we have a big, big list of other potential targets. In the last capital markets day, we show you two successful acquisitions. One was Tecnopacking in Spain, another De Ridder here in the Netherlands. I'm going to explain to you today, I'm going to show you another two good examples of successful acquisitions. The first one is MultiLine. We only say that there are three main reasons for a family-owned business, a good family-owned business to sell their company. One is lack of succession, the second is divorce, the third is death.
In this case, it was the death of the owner that triggered the acquisition back in 2003. At that time, we had two small companies in Denmark, and MultiLine was the leading player in the food service. Acquiring MultiLine, we enhanced our position significantly in Denmark, we became the number one in food service, and we had a very strong platform to grow going forward. This company has leveraged the Bunzl scale by investing heavily in sustainability, but also in digital technology. It has used very well the sourcing capabilities in Asia to develop strong own brands that have delivered higher margins.
All in all, it's a good example of a company that has benefited from being part of Bunzl, delivering a strong organic growth, which has been complemented by five small bolt-on acquisitions, which has enhanced their value proposition and the competitive advantage in the market. Since 2003, MultiLine has grown 10% CAGR its profit. The second example is also this. This is a fascinating company we acquired in 2014. In this case was the lack of succession the reason for selling the company. This was the leading player in the footwear, protective footwear distribution business in the Netherlands, with a great brand and good opportunities to grow.
By acquiring this company, we enhanced our position in our safety business after the acquisition back in 2011 of Majestic. This is a company that also, as the same as MultiLine, has leveraged on the Bunzl scale, investing in technology and taking advantage of the sourcing capabilities in Asia. Today, it's an agile customer-centric organization with strong digital capabilities and firmly committed to sustainability. In fact, they have founded the Circular Footwear Alliance, which promotes the collection of the shoes when they are at the end of their useful life, dismantle them, and use the recycled material to manufacture new shoes. They have the goal that by 2025, all the range will be manufactured at least by 50% of recycled material.
It's another good example of highly profitable business growing double-digit this profit since the acquisition. Now, as I mentioned before, we made a significant step in Germany by acquiring Hygi.de. It's a brilliant, fast-growing company. It's the leading online B2B distributor of cleaning and hygiene products. With a revenue last year of GBP 92 million, this acquisition has provided a significant scale now in Germany. What's most important is we have a strong platform to grow and we have acquired digital capabilities. I want to hear from them why they joined the group.
Mein Bruder und ich, wir haben das Unternehmen vor 18 Jahren gegründet.
2004 hatten wir am Anfang ein paar Produkte online gestellt, dann ging der Internetshop erst mal richtig los. Da haben wir GBP 0.6 Millionen gemacht. Im Jahr 2021 waren es GBP 106 Millionen und das sind natürlich unwahrscheinliche Sprünge und du wächst von Anfang an immer mit.
In Deutschland sind wir, ich sag, online sind wir bestimmt der Marktführer. Wir haben natürlich eine sehr gute Plattform mit über 65,000 Artikeln aus dem Bereich Hygiene und Reinigung. Wir führen über 500 brands, was Bunzl natürlich eine super Plattform bietet, auch in dem Bereich hier von Deutschland zu expandieren.
Ja, ganz am Anfang, wir stehen schon eigentlich immer jährlich seit 2012 in Kontakt. Da hat der Bunzl Deutschland, der Geschäftsführer, mich immer aufm Handy angerufen und dann kam der Geschäftsführer vorbei und dann haben wir gesagt: „Mensch, wir können doch zusammenarbeiten, wir haben doch gleiche Interessen. Guckt mal, ihr habt die gleichen Produkte wie wir und wir können doch in Deutschland was zusammen machen." So kam der Prozess. Das war total nett, das Gespräch.
Ja, wir haben natürlich für die Zukunft, für unsere Expansionspläne einen starken Partner gesucht, der im Endeffekt auch die gleiche Philosophie hat wie wir. Bunzl hält die Unternehmen sehr lange in der Bunzl-Familie. Wir können die Entscheidung selber treffen und bleiben weiterhin eigenständig und das war für uns ganz wichtig, damit wir auch unser Wachstum in Zukunft erreichen können.
Sag ich mal, gibt's auch irgendwelche Finanzhaie, ja, die nach drei Jahren die Firma wieder verkaufen?
Mhm.
Das ist nicht unser Interesse. Unser Interesse ist, ein nachhaltiges Geschäft, das aufzubauen. Dann musst du die Schnittstellen prüfen. Das heißt, wir gucken, welche Lieferanten hat Bunzl, welche Lieferanten hat Hygi.de. Das sind Synergieeffekte, die laufen ja gerade in allen Bereichen. Es sind viele Sachen in Human Resources, die Plattformen und so weiter, wo die Mitarbeiter das alles mitnutzen. Das sind natürlich Giveaways, die du sonst teuer bezahlen musst und die du jetzt kostenlos bekommst. Das Entwicklungspotenzial für die Mitarbeiter ist natürlich enorm bei der Plattform.
Ich finde es gut, dass Bunzl beim Thema Nachhaltigkeit sehr gut unterwegs ist. Bunzl hat bereits sehr viele etablierte Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien, von denen wir uns auch inspirieren lassen und wir werden auch unterstützen, dass wir die hier umsetzen. Für Hygi.de ist natürlich das Ziel, dass wir in mehreren Bereichen zukünftig die Klimaneutralität anstreben.
Unser eigenes Geschäft betreiben können, dass Bunzl und da sind wir super dankbar für uns weiterhin als Geschäftsführer einsetzt und uns volles Vertrauen schenkt.
Wir haben natürlich gewisse Expansionspläne und dafür braucht man natürlich einen starken Partner an der Seite. Bunzl war wirklich der einzige Partner, wo die Philosophien deckungsgleich waren. Deswegen war Bunzl eigentlich nur die einzige Option. Also so was wie Bunzl gibt's halt nicht ein zweites Mal auf dieser Welt.
I think this video reflects very well how we approach acquisition and the value we added to the acquired company. Just to conclude today, I think our great track record of growth demonstrate our capacity to grow sustainably and profitably. We are highly diversified and a resilient business, which adds value by solving our customers problem. This put us in a very well position to keep delivering strong returns going forward. We have a huge potential to grow organically and through acquisitions. I'm very optimistic and we do believe that the sky is the limit. Now we are going to take your questions. Don't forget to press star one and we will take 30 minutes pause to catch up the streaming. Okay, we are going to take the first question.
Don't forget to press star one, please.
Our first question comes from Sylvia Barker from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. A couple of questions for me. Given it's a very diverse region, I was just wondering if you can talk a little bit about sales and then incentives as well. Firstly, on sales, you have so many different avenues where you can grow, even in the three larger examples that you highlighted in France, the Netherlands and Spain. How is your sales function organized? How do you prioritize which types of customers to go for, and how do you incentivize people? Are they by country by country? Are they organized by vertical, et cetera? Secondly, in terms of the regional MDs, what are the incentive metrics for those as well? Thank you.
Thank you, Sylvia. When we talk about incentives, I'm going to start with, by the end, our local MDs, our local management are incentivized by organic profit growth, ROACI, and they have personal objectives. This is common across the area, and this is also common across the group. In terms of incentivizing salespeople, the salespeople and probably Wilbert can add to that, are incentivized by growing gross margin in cash terms and in percentage terms as well. In terms of type of customers and our type of customers are medium large customers. Customers that are buying more than GBP 50,000 a year represents 80% of our sales, right?
To engage with these customers, we normally have key accounts manager, and then we have category management in the purchasing department to help them innovate and co-develop and develop products, but also customer service to provide them expertise, to provide them support. Always this is backed always with technology. We try to provide them with the technology specifically in those pain points, in those not added value transactions. Like making order or knowing how is the status of a specific order, for example, right? If you, Wilbert, would you like to add a little bit more about the-
I think it's exactly the same in the Netherlands as you explained.
Okay, thank you. Maybe just, could I just follow up quickly on that? You've got to get. How does pricing work, I guess, with these customers? Because obviously this is a very profitable business for you, Continental Europe as a whole, and the margin has actually improved very impressively over time. They're very bespoke projects. How do you think about pricing these?
Yeah. Well, I think pricing, the pricing is local. Our fragmented customer base put us in a good position in terms of bargaining power. Perhaps, Wilbert, if you can give some color on how-
Yeah, we add so much value that, for example, for the smaller customers, it's no discussion at all. We just increase prices when necessary. With the bigger customers, we are in close contact, and we have contracts on a quarterly basis to adapt prices when necessary.
Perfect. Thanks very much.
Anvesh Agrawal, Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, I got three questions. First, just on the sustainable product, can you just comment on the average pricing on those products? Are they materially higher than the regular products? And are you able to maintain the same level of margin on the replacement product if sustainable product replaces the existing product? Number two, clearly some very interesting examples around the value-added services. Again, maybe some comment around how much that helps in terms of the pricing negotiation. I mean, are you able to charge more for some of the digital services or data analytics you provide? And then finally, just on the M&A, given such an integral part of the story, has anything changed recently from a pricing perspective, given the interest rates going up and presumably the multiples coming down in the private market?
Thank you.
Wilbert, you take probably the-
Yeah, I can take maybe the second one. You saw the example of CEVA, and before we went into a master agreement, they tendered the business every single year, and they went for the lowest price. Since we went into that agreement five years ago, they have the right to benchmark us, and they never did it. That proves that our relationship is so strong, and they trust us so much. On average, the margin on sustainable products is higher than on the commodities. Also, if you look at the sustainable margins, we have always been able to manage pricing very well when they change. We benefit as well as from price decrease as from price increase.
Yeah. In terms of your first question, yes, I think sustainable products are more expensive, and they have higher margins. The alternative products are supportive both top line and margins. In terms of the last question, we don't see any, let's say, slowdown in our M&A activity. We have a very solid and promising pipeline, as I mentioned before in the presentation. We are not seeing any change in the type of companies we normally acquire, which are family-owned companies in the range of GBP 30 million-GBP 40 million size, right?
Sorry, my question was more like, I mean, presumably the multiples for some of these M&A have went up, and are they starting to normalize again given what's happening sort of around the interest rates and yields? That's more around like the multiples on the M&A and how they have trended.
We stay disciplined. I mean, we normally pay from six to eight, enterprise value to EBIT multiple. We basically see that we are in the same level. We have been the same level, and we stay disciplined in that sense. If there is a strategic acquisition, a bolt-on acquisition that we could value more. Yeah, I think our level of multiples are between six and eight, enterprise value to EBIT.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon. Just a couple of things as a follow-up. On the pricing aspect, good to hear that the pricing is done on a quarterly basis. Now, given that wage inflation is reaching pretty high levels in Europe at the end of this year, early next year, probably high single digits-low double digits. Has your conversation with, you know, your customers basically changed given the quantum of price increase that you need to pass through? And then secondly, just on the margins, it's very clear that your continental Europe has, you know, much better margins than U.K., U.S. Obviously, there are some differences in the mix, but is there anything else that is different, that can be taken as a read across or can be done better? Why is the margin basically higher in Europe?
As you gain market share via your acquisitions, is there scope for this margin to expand further medium-term? Thank you.
Okay. Yes, perhaps, Wilbert, take the pricing one.
I'll take this first one, yeah. When there's wage inflation, it's, it counts for anybody, so for us and for our competitors and also for the customers and for our suppliers. Our buying proposition is so strong that we can put these increases through. We don't wait for these discussions till the end of the year. It has already been discussed in the last couple of months because we all read in the newspaper what is happening. They know what we add for value, and they accept because we are in very, very, very close contact with them.
In terms of the margin, I think the margin is reflective of our high margin is reflective of the market sector mix. I mean, we are more weighted in safety, cleaning and hygiene, and healthcare, which normally attract higher margin. Also we have a more fragmented customer base, so we have a low customer concentration. This contribute to have this higher margin. In terms of the outlook going forward, I think we have pretty confidence to keep this level of margins, because our value proposition is strong to keep growing organically. Obviously if we acquire companies with high margin, this could increase over time. I think I'm confident to keep.
I'm very confident to keep these levels of 9.5%, 11% margin going forward.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. David Brockton from Numis, please go ahead.
Good afternoon. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, just trying to understand that European margin point a bit more. Can you just talk about how important own brand products are to the offering continental Europe? Do you approach it any differently? Is the growth mirrored to sort of wider group at around 24% of revenues? The second question just relates to the outsource procurement webshops. I just wondered if you could just discuss sort of what the greatest impediment is to signing more customers on webshops. Do you have any statistics around customer retention on those platforms? Thank you.
Thank you, David.
I'm going to take the first one and probably Eric.
I think that as mentioned, the European margin is mainly driven by customer fragmentation and the mix of our market sector. Our own brand percentage to sales is in line with the group. It's 25%. We are seeing now with the pressure of inflation a growing penetration of the own brand because we have the responsibility to offset this with our customers, and we use own brand as an instrument to do that. In terms of your the webshops?
Yeah. For the webshops, first you have to look at the buying process of the customer. The bigger customers, they cannot buy online because they got their own procurement process with their authorizations, et cetera. There we go for integrated solutions with PunchOut, et cetera, that they come to our webshop to find information through the selection and then take the information into their procurement system. That works very well for most of the customers. Smaller customers or the maverick buying, so products that are not really in a contract, they can buy online. To have more customers there, first, of course, the users need to know that the webshop is there. Second one is you need to provide the right information so that they're sure to find the right products there, and they make it very easy to order.
That's the greatest block, signing more customers on the webshops. Retention statistics, yes, we see that. I think we see that overall in the market. The more you can give a multi-channel approach to the customer, the more retention you will have. Because you take the contract sales and you take everything that we would always sell as a contract spill. The more you can give a multi-channel solution and integrate your webshop in your offering, the higher retention will be.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are currently no further questions in the queue. With this, I'd like to hand the call back to the room.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for attending this event. My colleagues and I are very happy to having shared with you this hour and trying to show you the strength of our business. Thank you very much.
Thank you.