Hello, welcome to Bunzl's Investor Insight Series, focused today on Bunzl North America. My name is Jim McCool. I have the privilege of leading Bunzl North America and its 8,700 team members. I'm now in my 25th year with Bunzl. I've seen us grow from being a leading national grocery and food service distributor to a diversified and resilient portfolio of leading businesses, servicing a broad range of customers across six core sectors, now including Agriculture, Food Processor, and Safety. The growth story in these sectors is both organic and acquisition driven. We maintain a strong and attractive pipeline of acquisition opportunities in these higher margin, higher growth sectors.
Today, in addition to providing a high-level overview of the North American business and its growth opportunities, we'll highlight three businesses, our Ag, Food Processor, and Safety businesses, which continue to deliver strong margins and growth owing to their customer and sector-focused strategies. Joining me today are the managing directors of these businesses, who combined, have over 50 years at Bunzl. John Murphy, MD of our Agriculture in Mexico, Bryon London, MD of Food Processor, and Dale Stokes, MD of Safety. Each joined Bunzl upon Bunzl's acquiring the company they worked for, with John and Dale having been partners in their respective companies. These leaders and their businesses are prime examples of the entrepreneurial mindset so prevalent across Bunzl, building and implementing strategies to support their particular sectors and end markets.
After an overview of the North American business, I'll turn it over to John, Bryon, and Dale to highlight the expertise and innovation in their business, which help deliver strong organic growth and double-digit operating margins. Then come back and focus on the expansive acquisition opportunities for North America. Following, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. We'll show you today how North America, the largest business in the Bunzl Group, has significant opportunity for further growth. Innovation, including expansion of our exclusive own brands and sector-focused, customer-tailored solutions, will fuel organic growth. Our significant pipeline of acquisition act opportunities, particularly in our higher margin, higher growth sectors, will continue a strong track record of acquisition growth. Together, these will drive growth and support medium-term upside for our North American margin.
The North American business is relatively young, having only entered the U.S. in 1981. In our early years, our primary focus was the grocery and food service space, and we had much success consolidating local and regional operators into the leading national supplier of packaging and operating consumables in both the U.S. and Canada, which we entered in 1995. From within grocery and food service, we identified adjacencies in Food Processor and convenience store, adding anchor acquisitions in each in the early 2000s, and which remain today some of the best performing businesses within Bunzl. Food Processor led us to investing in the Agriculture space, and we also leveraged our global portfolio and successes in the U.S. and for cleaning and hygiene across Canada. Our [one] for higher margin growth. Today, the North American business is the largest within Bunzl, with 60% of global revenue.
While North America may be best known for its distribution excellence in servicing large national customers in the grocery and food service space, it has grown significantly in recent years in sectors such as Food Processor, Agriculture, and Safety, each with a strong focus on adding value for their customers and end markets through product innovation and exclusive own brands, in addition to their industry-leading supply chain excellence. The North American business has an expansive footprint, with national coverage across each of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Servicing customers across six core segments are our 49 focused operating companies, supported by 8,700 team members, with each sector accessing a discrete distribution network within our 190-plus locations. Our teams are sector-focused, with over 1,600 sales experts and customer service specialists providing customized sales solutions and support for customers, both national and local, large and small.
Our supply chain is equally broad, leveraging both global and local supplier relationships to provide our customers with innovative, exclusive own brands, as well as leading manufacturer brands across a vast array of categories, with an ever-increasing focus on both sustainable packaging as well as the sustainability of our supply chain. Over the last 10 years, the North American business has delivered strong growth, with 7% revenue CAGR and 8% operating profit CAGR, while increasing operating margins by 50 basis points. This doubling of the business was fueled both organically and via acquisition, with acquisitions accounting for 55% of the overall growth over that period. As I indicated earlier, we've seen significant growth in higher margin, higher growth sectors over that time, and the operating margin increase is reflective of that sector mix.
While we're pleased with the results of the past 10 years, we're also very optimistic for the coming years, given the significant opportunities ahead, both organically and with our strong pipeline of acquisitions. North America serves a diverse range of sectors, with further breadth of end markets within each sector, supporting resilience across the business and the economies it serves. Despite several large national customers, the overall customer base is fragmented, with less than 30% of revenue from our top 10 customers. Our customer relationships are strong, with average partnerships exceeding 20 years across our top 40 customers. Our operating margin of 6.9% reflects the sector mix, with lower double-digit margins for Processor, Ag, and Safety, balancing mid-single-digit margins in sectors such as grocery, food service, and retail.
Despite the margin differentials, though, the return on assets of both groupings are largely in line with the North America group average of 45%, owing to structurally higher inventory turns, particularly in grocery and food service. While at differing stages of penetration and consolidation, each sector affords significant opportunity for growth in the coming years, driven by a strong focus on exclusive own brands and sustainable packaging, macro tailwinds from investment in infrastructure and nearshoring in Mexico, as well as an active pipeline of accretive acquisitions. We are a trusted partner to our customers because we are a specialist distributor with a value proposition, both broad and deep. We combine industry-leading distribution excellence and a broad product range, highlighted by our exclusive own brands and sustainable packaging alternatives, with data and analytics designed to provide our customers actionable insights with which to manage their business.
In short, we are an extension of our customer and their teams, crafting tailored solutions to meet our customers' specific needs. Our Canadian team says it best, "The power of global sourcing, the efficiency of a national network, and the advantage of local relationships and expertise." Our own brand portfolio is a core strategic advantage for us, often demanded by the end user, and is a key driver of our higher-margin, higher-growth businesses. The ranges are designed and built for the end segments and customers we serve. Our range offers value and differentiation at each level of a good, better, best product assortment. Certain of our sectors, like safety, source and sell nearly 100% exclusive own brand range, while other sectors have only single-digit penetration of exclusive own brands, which affords significant opportunity for margin-enhancing growth.
The group of businesses we'll hear from today are great examples of both the organic and acquisition growth opportunities available, and share a common formula for success: an innovative product range designed to meet their sector and customer-specific needs, sector-focused sales and customer service specialists delivering tailored solutions, and an entrepreneurial mindset, investing in exclusive own brands, talent, and technology to deliver value-added, tailored solutions.
These businesses have delivered for our customers, and they have also delivered for North America, with 7% organic revenue CAGR and 16% total revenue CAGR since 2012. With an average 14% operating margin, driven by 50% own brand penetration, these businesses combine to deliver 40% of North America's adjusted operating profit. Now, let's take a deeper look at the value we bring our customers across our Processor, Agriculture, and Safety businesses. Please welcome John Murphy, MD of our agriculture business in Mexico. John?
Thank you, Jim. My name is John Murphy. I'm Managing Director of Bunzl Agriculture and the Country Manager of Mexico. I'm thrilled to be here today to present a section on Bunzl Agriculture and the dynamic businesses that we're operating. This group of companies represents a critical position in the North American food supply chain. When you think about these businesses, think about strawberries, raspberries, loose-leaf lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and celery. All the things that are nutritious that arrive on your dinner table each and every night, and if you were to walk the major supermarkets in North America, you'd see our products in the vegetable and fruit sections. We focus on products that growers use to harvest their crops. In that regard, think of flexible packaging for carrots, for lettuce, clamshells for the berry category, which is strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and the entire tomato category.
Additionally, we have a large segment of products that are corrugation-focused, thousands of items that support the growers' harvest events each and every day. Most recently, we've added to the group our farming supplies. We now sell specialized mulch film, stakes, twine system for the growers to prep their crops, along with certain crop protection systems. Our customers are the who's who of the fruit and vegetable industry. Think of Driscoll's Berries, the largest berry grower in the world, Bolthouse Farms, the largest grower of carrots in North America, and a significant producer of fresh juices in North America. Naturipe Farms, Taylor Farms, just to mention a few leading customers in this group. As we'll discuss shortly, being close to our customers is key, we operate in 18 warehouses concentrated in California, Florida, Michigan, Mexico, and Canada.
We've enjoyed double-digit CAGR growth since 2012. We're proud to be a high-touch, value-add business partner to our customers. Our expansion has been achieved through strategic acquisition and organic growth, following our customers as they've grown. Bunzl entered the agricultural business in 2010 with the anchor acquisition of Cool Pak. Cool Pak is a business historically focused on rigid clamshells in the berry and tomato categories. They've been very successful in the Western U.S., primarily operating in California, and have enjoyed a large organic growth story in Mexico, corrugated products, which we're very interested in. They're located in Beijing. Destiny operates in the central part of California and Yuma, Arizona. Their product line was new to us and focused on flexible packaging, bags, and pouches for various vegetable and produce products.
In 2018, Monte Package Company joined Bunzl, and I'm proud to say that Monte Packaging is near to celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025, which gives you a sense of the type of businesses that we're buying. They're located in Riverside, Michigan, and serve growers in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. Monte has a very large range of products to address their customer needs. Lastly, but not least, in 2021, we acquired Intergro. Intergro is a group that primarily focuses on farm supplies for the growers that prepare their fields. Those products, as I mentioned, can be mulch films, stakes, twine, and various irrigation products integral to crop preparation. They represent a unique adjacency for us and allow us to cross-sell those new products into our portfolio of existing geographies.
Bunzl Agriculture is full of entrepreneurs, often former owners, who seek new opportunities to serve their customers in a diverse North American footprint. We've taken a strong position in Mexico by following our customers into new geographies. Many of our customers have made investments in central Mexico, Baja California , and certainly Sonora and Sinaloa. To serve them, we've added strong personnel to the region. We'll stand up facilities where required, we'll add local manufacturing, we'll add equipment and automation, we'll add label printing, and we'll scale these organic opportunities appropriately. It's key to understand that 75% of vegetables consumed in the U.S. are grown in Mexico, and 50% of fresh fruit consumed in the U.S. are also grown in Mexico. We anticipate further investment in this marketplace.
We have grown organic revenue at 11% on a compounded annual basis since 2012, and with half of this driven by our expansion into Mexico. We also see strong opportunities for continued growth, supported by strategic acquisition in both agriculture and other Bunzl sectors. Bunzl Agriculture is also supported by a strong focus on innovation and sustainability. We have an independent innovation center that all our business units utilize, and it's a fantastic resource for our customers. I'd like to walk you through a small sample of that innovation and give you a sense of how we take that journey with our customers. Initially, we engage with the customers as they're seeking packaging improvements and innovations. We're really looking for feedback. We're listening to these customers about what they're trying to achieve. We have packaging engineers, in-house software for product rendering, and high-speed 3D printing.
We help develop the package by focusing on many variables, which include retail merchandising specifications, cooling requirements, internal volume, substrate materials, and modified atmosphere requirements. Once the design is complete and the tool or mold is built, we hand it off to our contract manufacturer for final production. That finished product returns to our group, where we customize it through high-value-added services, high-speed labeling, assembly, embedded trace and track technologies. We introduce unique water-soluble adhesives, so labels separate from the recycling process efficiently. Bunzl hands the finished product back to our growers just in time. They harvest, and you and I produce, buy these items in the grocery stores. Through various recycling processes, the package finds its way back into the circular economy. As mentioned, sustainability is a very important part of our customer's journey.
Everybody in our supply chain is required to have a point of view on sustainability. This journey, we continue to leverage our in-house innovation center to surface opportunities. Our market, much of this sustainability momentum, is directly connected to national, regional, and local legislation. Leading retailers accelerate the desire for alternative materials each and every day. As an example, I'll take you through the life cycle of a tomato package. In pre-2018, this PET clamshell would be made of 100% virgin PET resin, and it would have a non-water-soluble branded label attached. As you moved into 2018, this product might evolve into a plastic lid and be replaced with a branded flexible film, giving you 30% reduction in overall plastic, and the package would become 100% recyclable.
By 2022, that lining film may remain, and the base would be replaced by essentially a paperboard base, delivering a 100% recyclable package. Bunzl has a significant advantage in sustainability revolution. Bunzl is flexible in using different packaging materials that fit its customers' needs. Flexibility enables us to pivot from substrate to substrate and deliver the customer a unique solution for their market demands. As a prime example of addressing our partners' market needs, I'm happy to turn the presentation towards a special customer testimonial from Bolthouse Farms. After the video, my colleague, Bryon London, will introduce you to Bunzl Processor Division. Thank you.
Bolthouse Farms is North America's leading carrot producer, as well as the premium juice supplier. We've been doing juices since 2003, and we've been doing carrots since 1950. We control about 45%-50% of North America's carrots and about 30% of North America's premium juices. History is about 15 years with Bunzl, we started with them with flexible packaging, and that is our primary relationship with them. It's evolved into a lot of different areas outside of flexible packaging, from our wraps to field packaging, to getting into our sleeves and labels, looking at rigid and really just leveraging every relationship we can with Bunzl within their network to figure out how to push the best value for Bolthouse.
The relationship of Bunzl is really hard to describe because it's a partnership more so than a relationship. We process 4 million lbs of carrots a day. You can imagine how many bags or how many flexible packages that requires in order to move the product. Over half of it is private label, when you're in the grocery store and you see a bag of carrots, it's gonna be a Bunzl bag from us, but it may not be a Bolthouse label. Bunzl handles all of that, regardless of whatever the brand is. It's hard to figure out oftentimes when we're working on a project, where does the Bolthouse relationship start or end with Bunzl because of they're so integrated within our process.
There's within our innovation pipeline, within our new product development, they're early on adapters of figuring out what they can do to help us and really dialing and adding value to whatever our process is. Our relationship and our partnership is really strategic in that sense, and over the 15 years, they're one of the first people we call on when we're coming up with an idea. The other part that we've seen with Bunzl is their network. There's times, during COVID especially, where we leaned on stuff outside of the normal packaging needs. We were able to keep the plants up and running because Bunzl was able to find masks and whatever throughout their network. We were able to buy chemicals to keep our plants clean.
On our beverage side, we were struggling to find a chemical to keep the plant clean. Bunzl, within their network, found it and was able to divert some sanitation chemicals to keep us up and going. Sustainability is very important to Bolthouse Farms. We're farmers. We're stewards of the land, and if we don't take care of the land, we don't have a business. Market expertise is what we rely from Bunzl, really keeping us up to speed on what's going on in different markets. We're working on a compostable program, where Bunzl has come with some creative solutions around backyard compostable. We're in the middle of that process of getting that done. We're gonna launch it here in the summertime. Bunzl will be a key partner in making sure that happens.
This ability to be dynamic, come back with those creative solutions, come back with solutions we're gonna need in 6 months and really get some momentum behind it's what keeps us different from our competitors. Well, our future plans for Bolthouse continues, is growth. We're big fans of the G word. To be able to have Bunzl on the call to solve the other parts of the business, not only does it help you sleep at night, but it allows you to free up time to really work on stuff that can add more value to the business, which is what we need to be doing.
Thank you, John. Hello, everyone. I'm Bryon London, and this is my 21st year with Bunzl Processor Division. I was a leader with the Koch Supplies business, which was the anchor acquisition by Bunzl into the food processing industry. It's my pleasure to introduce you to our business, and as I do this, I think you'll see three themes in our business. First is industry expertise, the second is innovation, and the third is continuous improvement. The products that we distribute are broad and include material handling, packaging, cleaning and hygiene, cutlery, and all types of PPE. Many of our large customers are known worldwide, and they include companies like Tyson Foods, Smithfield, JBS, Kraft Heinz, and Hormel.
We also partner with thousands of other customers, both big and small, who process food all across North America, including categories like proteins, seafoods, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and candy plants. The map you see on the right is a partial illustration of our distribution centers, our field sales representatives, and customer locations. The customer locations noted in blue are a fraction of the actual plants we service. We consolidated them by zip code because there were far too many to show on this map. To help everyone get a better understanding of our Processor Business, we have a brief video we'd like to share, where you can hear directly from our associates, and after that, we'll look at some numbers.
Our purpose is to make food companies successful. They don't have to manage hundreds of suppliers. They only have to manage one. We deem ourselves a one-stop shop. We can supply so many different categories that a lot of our competitors cannot. Primarily, our core focus has been on protein, but we also deal in all sorts of areas within food and beverage. In soups, sauces, dairy, produce. Bakery, seafood. You know, everything related to food safety. You know, from gloves to knives to packaging, whatever it might be. If you want the very best, innovative, unique products designed exclusively for food processors, we're the place to come to get those. We always try to satisfy the customer needs.
Our customers know they're going to get the answers and the expertise. You're gonna get somebody when you call in. I just kind of know what they need and when they need it. Our customers have a high level of trust with us. They're counting on us to get them those supplies. Get the orders out on time and accurately. When they think of supplies or packaging, we want them to think of Bunzl Processor Division. We have 14 distribution centers across the United States. That enables us to service nearly every single customer in the US with a one-day or even same-day lead time. They can immediately put it into service and not have to worry about checking it for its quality.
The product quality and the service, you have to combine those two things. Bunzl Processor Division, in particular, operates as a small, family-owned business. The catalog department's been around for 140 years. Koch started way back in the stockyards, and we've tried to continue that tradition. We have become like a second family. When people walk in, I take care of them in the way that I would want to be taking care of all my coworkers. They're all like that. You get a little bit of the best of both worlds. You get the resources of a large, multibillion-dollar company. You also get the culture, and the feeling, and the relationships of working for a small family-owned business. One of the advantages of having Bunzl owning our company is that they have this global reach.
There's an international logistics team that just watches things like container traffic, ships moving, are ships departing on time. It's about building the best supply chain possible. When you're happy and you express that in your job, it reflects on your service, and that extends to the customer. We spend a lot of time thinking about the future. How do we prepare Bunzl to be the distributor of choice to service food companies that are indeed feeding the nation.
Okay, now for some numbers. We carry 33,000 unique items in stock, and it's interesting to note that over 5,000 of these items are new in our business since 2022. This is a reflection of our continued growth into new categories with our current accounts, as well as entirely new accounts in different sectors of food processing, and they all have unique needs. Our largest customers are also some of our longest relationships, as shown on average well over 20 years. Lastly, for this page, we've built our business, expanded our distribution footprint, and staffed our team members all around our customers' locations, resulting in our being able to service 97% of our customers within 24 hours. Industry experience is a large driver of our success. To be clear, I'm not talking about expertise in distribution. That's a basic expectation.
The expertise we'll look at is in our customers' operations. Within our business, over 50% of our people require specialized training focused on food processing plants and their unique set of requirements. For example, a person in sales or product development cannot effectively do their work unless they fully understand the unique needs of these plants and the conditions in which the plant employees operate. Now, once our people gain that knowledge in this area, they become very effective at driving value for our customers. I'll show you specific examples of that shortly. On average, our team has a tenure of 8.5 years, and on average, we see our customers once per month. That number doesn't really tell the story. One customer may need us at a facility several times a week, and others may only want us to see them quarterly.
Additionally, the customers regularly increase or decrease these needs as their priorities shift. The important thing to know here is that we're structured to adapt and fill those needs on demand as they change. So far, we've talked about specialized industry knowledge utilized by highly tenured people and our constant presence in the customer's facilities. Let's look at what happens when we add innovation into that mix. Here are two specific examples of our innovative culture. On the left is a boning knife from our INOX PRO line, which is our brand. Now, in a protein processing plant, these knives are in use for eight to 16 hours per day, and they run through grinding and sharpening machines one or 2x daily. As a result, cutlery can last as little as 10 to 12 days on average.
Our INOX PRO line is a step forward, lasting 15% longer, it has improved ergonomics for the users, and the manufacturing is done with sustainable materials, zero landfill manufacturing. On the right is our new Edgemaster slicing blade, and again, that's our own brand. These blades are attached to machines for applications, including slicing meats for fajitas or slicing bacon. OEM blades, or original equipment blades, are excellent, but they're very, very expensive, and aftermarket blades are cheaper, but they tend to be less consistent than the OEM. Our Edgemaster line fills the need for a less expensive blade than the OEM, but with consistency of product that matches the OEM results. In addition to the blade itself, take a look at our packaging, 'cause it's unique.
It's a recyclable box, which is used for the safe transport of those blades to and from the equipment where they'll be used on the production floor. This is an industry first. You likely noticed that both the products we're showing here are not simply a replication of industry standards. They are, in fact, better products. The improvement of specifications for our own brands, whenever possible, is a key to our own brand success. We've looked at two specific examples of own brands innovation. Let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The Processor Division now carries 1,400 SKUs of own brands, driving innovation into our industry, driving value to our customers, and, of course, attractive returns for our investors.
Our focus here has been a key contributor of growth and success of our business, with profit from own brands increasing tenfold since 2015. Innovating improved products is challenging, once the new product design is finalized and specifications are set, the challenges have only just begun. Next comes a global search for factories with high quality, fair costs, they need good working conditions for their people, and sustainable manufacturing processes. This factory search is normally a daunting task, which can slow or stop product development projects, not at Bunzl. Own brand success is accelerated with the partnership of the Bunzl Global Importing Office. Bunzl's global sourcing expertise allows us to focus on our next round of innovations. You see, that combination allows us to drive innovation and value for our industry at a very strong pace.
All the areas I've discussed so far come together in our most critical area, which is where our business makes contact with our customers. It's our sales and service teams. These teams utilize a model known as CI, or Continuous Improvement. With this model, we demonstrate our company's ability to do three things. One, is we drive immediate value for our customers when we partner up. Second, as you can see, we innovate customer-centric solutions. Third, is we drive significant annual documented cost reductions. Again, documented cost reductions for our customers. As our sales team consistently delivers on these promises, our relationships with customers evolve. You see, it doesn't take long for a traditional sales and buyer relationship to become a relationship of a strategic partnership. Soon thereafter, our customers bring us opportunities when their other suppliers are not adding similar value.
This, in turn, drives opportunities for wallet share through additional product lines to current accounts, as well as entirely new categories. We've covered the industry specialization, the innovation of own brands, and the continuous improvement. Now, let's take a look at a specific example of how these all come together to drive organic growth. A recent example of that is Tyson Foods. We were not the primary supplier for Tyson, but in the areas where we did supply them, we stood out because of our CI model and, more importantly, our consistent execution of that model. In time, they gave us opportunities outside of our previous scope, and we again delivered improved products at lower costs. Thus, when their contract with their previous supplier expired, we were awarded that business, which more than doubled our relationship.
Supported by this approach, we've been able to drive 7% organic revenue CAGR since 2012. I'm excited about the future for the Processor business in continuing to drive this momentum. We expect to be able to continue to deliver wallet share gains, win new customers, and we're looking to expand into new industrial food segments. On behalf of all 327 of our team members, I want to thank everyone for your attention. We're honored to serve a critical role in North American food production, as well as our role in creating attractive returns for our investors. With that, I'll turn the floor over to my friend, Dale Stokes, Managing Director for our Safety Division.
Thank you. As Bryon says, I'm Dale Stokes, and I'm privileged to lead and support our Safety Divisio n in North America. I've been fortunate to enjoy a varied Bunzl career to date, selling my distribution business into the group 10 years ago, then moving to lead our Cleaning and Safety Division in the U.K., before relocating with my family to the U.S. in late 2019 for my current role. Our division comprises 13 businesses that between them own over 40 leading brands. We design and bring to market a diverse range of head-to-toe personal protection equipment, or PPE, and have more recently entered the adjacent asset protection category. Today, we have 47,000 products across all categories, spanning the full spectrum of value and premium positioning, and have a particular strength in the industrial sector, where workplace risks, and therefore usage of our products, is greater.
In 2022, the division contributed GBP 870 million of revenue at constant currency, which was 12% of our North American business area. The division has grown significantly in recent years through acquisition, broadly adding at least one business per year since 2014 to achieve high double-digit revenue and profit CAGR since then, trading at profit margins above both business area and Bunzl Group averages. Head-to-toe PPE is literally that. PPE designed to protect different parts of a body from potential injury, and in doing so, allow employers to achieve legal compliance and manage the business risks and costs arising from worker injuries. I'd like to share a short video that provides greater insight into our products and approach.
Step into the dynamic world of Bunzl for a front row seat into the experience of showcasing at a national trade event, an exceptional demonstration of our market strategy, how we go to market, and feature exhibits from a number of our different businesses. This is a very innovative, impact and cut-resistant glove, but very, very flexible and easy on the hand, so the people wearing it won't realize they're wearing a glove, but they'll be protected front and back of the hand.
At these events, we are able to meet with both distributors and end users to demonstrate the wide variety of our products and solutions we have within our ranges. This glove is unique in the fact that the entire glove is made from biodegradable nitrile. This glove is another sustainable option in our line today. It allows our expert teams the opportunity to engage with these partners to discuss how different roles in the workplace have exposure to different risks and require specific products that meet relevant technical standards and legislation.
Here we have the Tingley line of protective footwear that meets the impact and compression standards. Also, a consistent factor in the flight line is the nitrile rubber outsoles, available in several different tread patterns. It also represents an excellent chance to show new innovations, including early-stage samples and prototypes, to gain distributor and end user feedback and inform our new product development approaches.
A key difference between our division and some other parts of the Bunzl Group is our position in the value chain, where we operate at the highest level as a brand owner. Positioning ourselves as an innovative brand owner is one of the key reasons behind this division being one of Bunzl's higher margin sectors. Our decentralized product development teams innovate to design products that maximize wearer protection, combined with the highest levels of comfort, since comfort encourages wearer compliance and therefore consumption. We work closely with third-party manufacturers, and in many instances, we are a select licensee of leading raw materials, allowing us to use high-performance branded fabrics and coatings in our designs. Our approach also ensures a highly flexible supply chain with no long-term contractual commitments. We use push and pull sales strategies to grow our businesses.
We seek to have distributors list and stock our product and push it through the supply chain and their sales resources, while simultaneously stimulating end users to demand and pull our products from those distributors. Our distributors are a diversified mix of national and regionally focused firms across a spectrum of distributor types. Some are safety specialists, some are broad line industrial distributors, and some specialize in specific vertical sectors, such as automotive or welding. Through those distributors, we support a wide range of end-use markets, providing further revenue diversification. The diversity of those end-use markets is demonstrated by the chart on this slide, which with each showing strong organic growth potential. It is also worth noting the limited cyclicality in the higher PPE consumption end markets, such as infrastructure, construction, and utilities. Ultimately, the provision of PPE to workers is not discretionary.
It is a legal obligation for employers to supply it. Switching to market drivers, we wanted to highlight three growth tailwinds ahead. Firstly, we continue to see strengthening of PPE legal standards and certification, which is favorable to well-resourced and quality-orientated brand owners such as ourselves. Our teams participate in the consultations that set the national technical standards for PPE, and we are further encouraged by the growing investment in OSHA, the government agency here in the US that is responsible for enforcing health and safety standards, which can only increase wearer compliance and therefore PPE consumption. Secondly, we see the user experience in the U.S. PPE market evolving from a position where PPE is simply provided to achieve compliance, to a place where comfort and overall well-being is a prime consideration.
This provides organic expansion opportunities, such as dedicated PPE for female workers, or higher price point items that bring comfort and functionality over and above the base compliance need. Finally, the U.S. government's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has committed $1.2 trillion of investment into exactly the kind of infrastructure projects that have high PPE consumption, with around $550 billion of this being incremental spend. Set against those structural drivers and market growth potential, our division has a strong list of competitive advantages. We have trusted brands and innovative products. Personal safety is at the heart of our offering, and it takes time to build the levels of brand reputation people require to trust products will protect their own personal safety.
While we have been custodians of these brands for only a decade or so now, some have origins as far back as 125 years and have a long-standing reputation for quality, reliability, and compliance against all relevant risks. We have a polished, flexible, and balanced supply chain. In conjunction with a Bunzl Global Importing Office, we manage our manufacturing partner network to reduce business and supply risks. We seek to appropriately balance supply between near, mid, and far shore sources of Mexico, Latin America, and Asia. Doing so offers a key point of difference to our distributors and end user customers, providing confidence on supply continuity. Further, by collaborating with other Bunzl Safety businesses around the world and our Global Importing Office, we are able to achieve purchasing scale synergies.
Of course, all suppliers are subject to our sustainability commitments and fully audited for compliance to our ethical standards policies. We have transitioned to digital selling. Our businesses collaborate to efficiently deploy digital tools such as a PIM platform, containing all of our product information, management, data tags, and assets. This syndicates high quality, rich product data, such as photography and video, directly to our distributor selling websites to ensure the end user customers and their employees are able to easily find and select our product over that of our competitors. Finally, we also benefit from working closely with our 57 Bunzl Safety businesses across 26 countries. I'm proud to share our global safety network, a powerful alliance between those businesses for best practice knowledge sharing on global trends, certifications, supply chain opportunities, and group-wide initiatives such as digital trading and sustainable product solutions.
That last point is an excellent example of our network. With sustainability awareness and legislation progressing at different countries at different speeds, some of our businesses benefit from the experiences of those operating in countries at the forefront of change in this space. This allows them to execute new solutions more quickly and efficiently than if they were otherwise operating independently. As shown, we have a very successful track record when it comes to acquiring and integrating businesses into Bunzl, building a $1 billion revenue division in just a few short years. While the average multiple paid for our acquisitions between 2012 to 2019 was around 8x EBITDA, we are proud of how our model is able to bring about significant performance improvements in each business, such that if you take the enterprise value paid.
set against the 2022 EBITDA earnings for that same group of acquisitions, there is an implied multiple of around 5 x. This performance improvement is delivered by allowing our acquisitions to thrive as decentralized entities, yet ensuring we leverage those competitive advantages outlined to optimize performance and accelerate returns. Across the leading head-to-toe PPE categories, we have very significant headroom and a strong pipeline of potential acquisitions. Further, we remain open to adjacent opportunities, as demonstrated by the acquisition of asset protection specialist, McCue. Another example of adjacent markets under review include traffic safety products and wearable smart tech PPE.
While we have built a substantial safety business in North America, we remain enthused at the even greater opportunity ahead. On behalf of the 2,500 talented team members across our businesses, thank you for the opportunity to share more about our safety division, and I'll now pass back to our CEO, Jim McCool.
Thank you, Dale. John, Bryon, and Dale have clearly articulated the strong value proposition and competitive advantage for their business and within their sectors, and the higher growth in margins which they deliver. The foundation for success in each of these sectors was built from acquiring strong businesses with talented leaders, which Bunzl then cultivated, leveraging its global sourcing, operational excellence, and strong cash flow to invest, both organically and via further acquisition to accelerate growth. Our compounding strategy and management structure are both empowering and supportive to the newly acquired business. Our decentralized management structure sustains the entrepreneurial mindset of the former independent business, and the overarching resources and scale of a large global organization foster accelerated growth. Given this, and the overall strength of the group's cash flow and balance sheet, we see many opportunities to acquiring more fantastic businesses across North America.
We have many great examples of strong and sustained growth post-acquisition, perhaps none better than Food Processor, which Bryon spoke to you today. Let's review two other acquisitions which exemplify our acquisition strategy and integration success, continue to deliver higher growth, higher margins, and strong return on assets. Destiny Packaging was acquired in 2012 in our ag sector. Following on the anchor acquisition of Cool Pak in 2010, Destiny provided both category and capability expansion, as John explained. Over the years, the Cool Pak and Destiny teams have collaborated on packaging design, global sourcing, and supporting customer transitions to more sustainable packaging alternatives. Recently, as many growers have expanded into Mexico, the teams have been able to work together to identify local infrastructure and sourcing.
These collaborations augment Destiny's in-house packaging expertise and global sourcing of value-added, flexible packaging solutions, driving strong double-digit margins and consistently high growth, with 9% adjusted operating profit CAGR since joining Bunzl. These margins, combined with well-managed inventories, produce returns on assets at Destiny consistently above 100%. Another great example is our investment in Safety businesses, primarily servicing the welding end market. In early 2015, we acquired John Tillman, the recognized leader in welding hand protection, offering both categorical and end-market expansion, and a very strong, exclusive own brand. Later in 2015, we acquired Steiner Industries, which provides a broad assortment of welding-focused PPE and accessories, including welding screens. Again, expanding our category offering. Lastly, we acquired Revco and its strong Black Stallion brand, further enhancing our leading position in welding-focused hand protection and PPE.
Though these businesses maintain their brand identity and remain decentralized, we offer our customers the leading portfolio of user-demanded, exclusive own brands and accessories. Like Cool Pak and Destiny, these teams collaborate around product innovation, global sourcing, and value-added customization services, in addition to co-locating distribution centers and sharing investments in technology around digital engagement with customers, as well as operational effectiveness. Again, the leading exclusive own brand positioning, supported by Bunzl's global scale and expertise, has driven higher growth and strong double-digit margins, with 8% adjusted operating profit CAGR. These are just two of many great examples of successful and accretive acquisitions within the Bunzl Group. Can we continue to acquire strong businesses with talented leaders and successfully and profitably integrate them into Bunzl? Absolutely.
Across North America, we have significant opportunity for further acquisition growth in our existing segments, whether from category or end-market expansion, geographic expansion, or new capabilities. We've also identified segments where we have little presence today, such as healthcare, with rich opportunity to carve out a meaningful market niche utilizing our proven strategy of strong, exclusive own brands, specialist support, and tailored customer-focused solutions. Our teams maintain an active pipeline of 300+ near and medium-term acquisition targets, with combined revenue in excess of $14 billion. We certainly don't expect that we're going to acquire them all, and we will remain disciplined in our acquisition approach. Our strong track record of attracting sellers to Bunzl leaves us confident that we'll continue to drive significant growth in North America from acquisition.
Dale spoke of the significant opportunities within the still highly fragmented safety sector, a prioritized area of investment for North America. From rounding out a head-to-toe category offering of exclusive own brands, as well as expanding into near adjacencies with asset or traffic safety and technology-enabled PPE. Agriculture has significant opportunity for geographic expansion and supporting our other grower end segments, while Processor looks to niche opportunities to expand categories and capabilities to support their strong organic growth platform. From a geographic perspective, we have significant opportunity for growth in Mexico across all sectors. Using our existing market penetration levels in Canada and U.K. as a benchmark, our business in Mexico has market growth upside of four to 5x its current volume, and John is quickly developing a robust and actionable list of targets in his new responsibility as MD for Mexico.
Across North America, our passionate and dedicated teams have delivered sustained growth and strong revenue. The future is equally bright. Organically, our segment-focused specialists are uniquely positioned to support our customers with exclusive own brands, innovative and tailored supply chain solutions, including a strong focus on sustainability, and the data and the analytics to deliver actionable insights to help our customers improve their business, well supported by our global sourcing expertise and trusted national distribution networks. While many of our businesses are well penetrated with higher margin own brands, other businesses are only modestly penetrated, providing ample opportunity for higher margin growth as they integrate this proven strategy. From an acquisition standpoint, the opportunity is broad and deep: 300+ targets, $14 billion in combined revenue.
We've effectively used acquisitions in recent years to enter higher margin, higher growth sectors and successfully integrate and leverage them for post-acquisition organic growth. Many of our sectors remain fragmented, and our highly cash-generative business affords us significant headroom for further market consolidation. Both organically and from acquisition, you can expect further growth and margin upside from Bunzl North America. On behalf of John, Bryon, and Dale, thank you for letting us share with you the competitive advantage, fueling significant growth in margins in their respective segments, and we look to leverage this across our broader North American business. We're happy to take your questions on Bunzl North America and its growth opportunities in just a moment. Thanks again. Welcome back.
Again, thank you for your time and attention and allowing us to share the competitive advantage of our North American business, and in particular, our Processor, Ag, and Safety businesses. We welcome your questions and look forward to further conversation.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment, may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to only raise their hands if they're asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the Question tab. Anyone with a question, please press star and one at this time. The first question from the phone comes from Oscar Val from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Jim and team. Thanks a lot for taking the time. I had two questions. The first one on Food Processor and Ag. Can you just give us a sense of how much of that end market is outsourced versus still done in-house? And how does that compare to grocery, for example, since there is still a big opportunity to kind of take share from new outsourcing? That's the first question. The second question is going back, going on to Safety. It sounds like all the acquisitions you've done in the last 10 years are still run relatively decentralized. How should we think about the opportunity to build a kind of a bigger, integrated Bunzl Safety business in North America?
Will those businesses be integrated into a bigger business at some point, and how should we think about kind of benefits from sharing warehouses and sharing sales and back office in the Safety business? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I'll start on the Food Processor and Ag piece. From a kind of an outsource standpoint, most of our relationships in both the Processor and the Ag statement are with the users of our products. While we have significant penetration, for instance, in the processor space, there is plenty of space, both from a category standpoint and also expanding beyond the core. As Bryon spoke to, we have a significant position in protein today, but we also deal with bakery processors, salad processors, candy processors. Taking the value add and the continuous improvement model that is such at the core of their value proposition across a broader swath of processors is, you know, a significant opportunity for us. John, you want to touch on that from an Ag standpoint?
Yeah, absolutely. you know, we really deal directly with the farmers, and we deal directly with these different leaders in geographies. We have a huge opportunity with adjacencies. As I mentioned, Intergro, as a new acquisition, really provides us an opportunity to serve kind of the products that they need to prepare their fields versus the harvest products. As an opportunity, we look at that as a very, very big opportunity for us downstream.
Significant geographic expansion.
Absolutely.
Within the ag space as well.
To the safety question, yes, we absolutely want to build a bigger safety business, but not necessarily a single consolidated Safety business. You know, part of this Bunzl secret sauce is the way in which we our businesses thrive as decentralized entities. You know, that helps each of those groups to focus on their customers and solving their customers' needs, and that's how the growth comes about. We definitely want to preserve that. We do take opportunities to share overheads and scale behind the scenes on areas like sharing property and sharing technology costs, but absolutely remaining that decentralized ethos.
We have an online question. You highlighted the strong margins you get with own brand, but does the higher capital and investment needs that come with own brand mean that return on capital is fairly comparable to distributing third-party brands? It sounds like returns are higher at, for example, Destiny, but wondering what this looks like across the groups for own brand. As we highlighted in the presentation, when you think about the groups, the Safety, Ag, and Processor grouping that are further penetrated from an own brand perspective, they do have a similar return profile to some of the businesses that we have where there's less penetration, for instance, in the grocery and the food service space. You know, we do look to maintain an appropriate balance of that own brand.
We need to make sure that we're disciplined in our approach, that we will be driving increased return from own brands over time, and we are seeing that across the businesses. We've got another online question: How much of the 8%-9% operating profit CAGR from M&A typically comes from synergies, and how much from business growth? I think when you think about our business, we talk about ourselves being a GDP plus business. You know, we're going to be 1/3 organic and 2/3 acquisition over a long period of time. You know, we highlighted that in North America over the last 10 years, we were 55% from acquisition. That is a bit of a timing anomaly. I think the 1/3, 2/3 really holds up over time for us.
Some of what Dale highlighted in his presentation about the strong opportunities to leverage these businesses as we bring them together, focused on back-end synergies, back-end opportunities. We expect the businesses will continue from a GDP plus standpoint, organically, post-acquisition, but we'll certainly focus on harvesting synergies. Again, depending upon the business and the model in which we bring it in, often we're very decentralized. We look to find synergies through collaboration on sourcing and synergies that may not be reflected necessarily in that business we acquire, but across the sector as a whole. We've got another online question: What are your investment criteria in terms of M&A? What are the minimum return thresholds you require to do a deal?
Certainly, when we think about the criteria for M&A, we've got a number of factors that we try to consider. First and foremost is the cultural fit within Bunzl. Our culture is core to who we are, and it's core to our success. Bringing an entrepreneur into our business and having them fit from a go-forward perspective is really top of the list. We look for businesses, and sectors that have high fragmentation that we can consolidate. We certainly look for businesses that have a unique value proposition and afford long-term growth opportunities, not just for that business as a whole, but that they can contribute to the group and also take something from the group to help accelerate that growth.
In terms of minimum thresholds, you know, obviously for us, we're looking at acquisitions that are accretive, both from an operating margin standpoint as well as a return to the group. Would you mind sharing own label as percentage for revenue for grocery and food service and retail, please? Sure. As we mentioned, we've got certain businesses that are much more focused and much more penetrated in own brand. As we said, Safety, nearly 100% of what they source and sell comes from own brand. We've got other businesses, like the grocery, the food service, and retail business, where if you looked at those group businesses combined, you'd have own brand penetration of less than 10%. Significant upside to integrate and implement the own brand strategy and take that across a big part of our business.
Another question online: Are your key competitors, other large distributors or smaller companies? How does this vary by activity line? It's a great question. We operate across six core sectors, and we operate really in different parts of the value chain. You know, as Dale touched on, within the Safety business, we operate much higher up in the chain as a brand owner. Our competitors are other brand owners in many cases. You know, in our retail business or our grocery business, we're working both with national customers as well as regional and local customers. Our competitor mix reflects the nature of our customers oftentimes. The market is very, very fragmented, right?
We're one of the few organizations across all of our sectors that can offer a national footprint and really, you know, really across North America in being able to service customers. Gentlemen, anything to add there?
Well, definitely within Safety, we are very firmly this brand owning business selling into distribution. We are not a distributor in that space. Therefore, we compete with a range of other regional and national players in that manufacturing and brand owning environment.
As for Ag, we really do, depending upon geography, North America, we compete against large manufacturers, and we will stand our kind of manufacturing model up against that.
Another online question: Is there a plan to add industrial distribution to the portfolio, much like Bunzl Processor in the food processing segment? You know, when we look at the different markets that are available to us and assess the opportunities for investment, you know, we look at a broad group. We mentioned healthcare earlier. We've looked at adjacencies, you know, kind of broad and narrow as well. We participate in that space today a bit through our Bunzl Processor. We support it through our distribution in our Safety business, we'll continue to look at opportunities if we think that they can be accretive to the group and really add to the portfolio and the resilience and diversity that we have.
We have a question from the phone from Karl Green from RBC. Please go ahead.
Organic growth has averaged about 7% over the 2012 to 2022 period. Can you give some approximate indication about what the sort of price volume split has been of that 7%, please? The second unrelated question, just in terms of the own brand sourcing for North America, specifically, how much of that is domestically sourced at the moment versus international sourcing?
The first question, I just wanna make sure I heard it correctly. What was kind of the price volume split between 7% CAGR growth from 2012 to 2022? The second was.
Yes.
Kind of what's the balance of domestic versus international sourcing? Is that in general or specific to the own brands?
Specific to own brands, yes.
Specific to own brands.
That's right.
Okay. From a price volume standpoint, over that period of time, I think largely what we experienced over that period of time would have been reflective of what was happening in the, you know, the overall economy. We had periods of significant inflation, periods of significant deflation, but by and large, over that span, I think you would expect a normal kind of growth from both a price and a volume standpoint. From a domestic versus international on own brands, it's gonna vary greatly by business.
Our Safety businesses, the vast majority of their own brands are going to be sourced from outside of North America, but across a broad array of, you know, Asian countries, as well as recent investment into sourcing kind of more near shore in Mexico and parts of South America. In our distribution business, where they, you know, despite the lower percentage, there's still a fairly significant volume of own brands. That's a much more domestically sourced area today, but with further opportunity to expand that and take advantage of our global sourcing expertise. It really depends on the business and the nature of the category that we're sourcing, so it's really hard to give just kind of an overall, kind of, one-size-fits-all answer to that. Well diversified across both domestic and international, and well diversified within the international portfolio.
Understood. Thank you.
How does the incentive structure work for the segment leaders and operating company managers? As we talked about during the presentation, we're a highly decentralized organization, so we really value that business leader owning their P&L and driving growth in their local markets within their sectors. Our compensation schemes are aligned around that local P&L and the growth that they can deliver and the returns that they can deliver for the organization. Online question: Why is it better to operate further up the value chain as a brand owner relative to other segments? Why would you not want to be a brand owner in Food Processor and Ag?
I'll start with, I'm not sure that we do wanna be a brand owner, and we are a brand owner in, particularly in the food processing space. Ag is a bit different. because we work so closely with our customers on bespoke packaging solutions, so we view it as our product and our brand, but it's something that is oftentimes so direct and so proprietary to a particular customer, that it's a bit different. Certainly, some of the brands that Bryon pointed to in INOX and Edgemaster, we are the brand owner, and we really value that role in the supply chain. Dale, maybe you can speak to it from a safety standpoint.
Yeah, the power team, in safety is really about being effectively 100% a brand owner. The U.S. market is a significantly high safety market, and therefore operating that clear, delinking between, being a brand owner and a distribution model is appropriate for that space. You know, we have significant growth. We've experienced significant growth in that brand owner model. That's working well for us, and we see significant headroom ahead, and therefore, we are firmly wedded to that part of the supply chain.
I'll add to that for processor as well. Like the INOX PRO line that I spoke to earlier, there's a lot of brands of commercial cutlery out there, but they're all typically designed to work in a food processing plant or a restaurant or even for home use. Because we focus exclusively on food processors, we were able to work with our partner in Sweden and formulate those to withstand the grinding and sharpening machines in the USA much better, it gave our product a unique advantage over all the others. Having the own brand in that line gives us a significant strategic advantage.
We have an online question: What has been the trend, organic revenue growth and EBITDA margin momentum over the last five years for the 60% of divisional profit generated outside Food Processor, Ag, and Safety? When you think about the 60%, You're essentially and primarily talking about the grocery, the food service and the retail space, as well as our Canadian businesses. When we think about it over the last five years, the early part of those five years was certainly impacted by the significant onboarding of new volume with our largest grocery customer, which started to occur really late 2016, early 2017.
We onboarded that at a time when labor was becoming a bit more constrained across North America, there were certainly some operational challenges, but our team really rose to the occasion and really successfully onboarded that. That did provide a bit of pressure on the margins within that group. As we kind of got through that, and over the last several years, we've seen significant improvement in the margins in those businesses. Early on, our teams found significant opportunity during COVID to help our customers and the communities in which they serve by providing essential items, whether it was sanitizers, wipes, other hygiene items, disposable gloves, et cetera. Then, as we came through that, you know, we found significant opportunity as supply chains were really put under pressure.
We really saw the benefit of the global sourcing and the scale that we have as an organization to be able to find product and service our customers, when many other distributors and really many manufacturers were finding it difficult to maintain the service levels that they historically had. We've seen our margins improve, certainly over the last several years, and we feel that we are very well positioned as we move forward, particularly when our go-forward focus is on the exclusive own brands. We saw that power of having that role in the supply chain and really providing a sourcing expertise, as well as we continue to expand our focus on sustainability from both a packaging and a supply chain standpoint, which is becoming increasingly valued from our customers. Are your customer contracts set at fixed or variable prices?
How do you account for inflation? It varies differently, greatly across our business, but we have very few customer contracts across the broad part of the business. It's a bit concentrated within our grocery business, but that pricing is variable and will adjust. As manufacturer price increases are passed through to the market, we have an opportunity to pass through that. Also, many of our contracts give us the opportunity to pass through operating costs as operating costs increase. We've worked really hard in our businesses to kind of mitigate the impact of inflation, particularly on our operating costs within the business, but we've been able to successfully pass through product cost inflation to our customers across the contracts.
Again, really, within Processor, Ag, and Safety, very little contracts in general, and really, all of those contracts afford us the opportunity to pass price through to our customers on a timely basis. Online question: Can you please comment on how you see the medium-term growth margin profile and food service, ex processing and Ag, and grocery, which still makes up the largest mix in revenues? Do you see this shrinking in the mix further, given your focus on areas like Food Processing and Safety? From a mix standpoint, I would say yes, we do see it shrinking in the mix, but not shrinking. We expect to see continued growth in both food service and grocery from a top line and an operating profit standpoint.
Driven by the exclusive own brands, driven by our participation with sustainable packaging with our customers, and really helping them achieve their goals from a sustainability standpoint. While we don't expect that it will continue to grow at the same rate as we've seen in the Safety business, for instance, right? When we think about these businesses, 10 years ago, they were less than 10% of the global revenue, or excuse me, the North American revenue. They're now in excess of 20%. We expect to continue to grow faster in our higher-margin, higher-growth sectors, particularly via acquisition, which will, again, just kind of rebalance the portfolio as we go forward, and our margins are going to continue to reflect that sector mix as we go forward.
How is cross-sell across divisions, example, Food Processor and Safety, encouraged and managed within the decentralized businesses of North America? It's one of the great benefits that we have as an organization, where we've got businesses that play unique roles in the value chain and have unique brands that can support customers across many segments, right? Many of our customers, either directly or indirectly, operate across many of the sectors that we play in. I'll, you know, leave it to you guys to talk about. John, maybe you can focus first on the opportunities for cross-sell just within ag, with the differing businesses you have.
Absolutely. Today, we're really focused on harvest packaging, and as I mentioned, we've added sort of field prep and some other supplies that they use in their farming operations. All of those customers have a large employee base, and that employee base has opportunities for us to plug in some of our products from the Processor Division, such as gloves, other things that are around PPE. We'll make those introductions. We may actually distribute those through our Agriculture businesses, or we'll let the Bunzl Processor Division connect with them directly. Those opportunities are there, and we grab them if they make sense.
I think one of the interesting, you know, Dale touched on the acquisition that we made recently in safety space with McCue, which is an asset protection business. Most of McCue's customers are customers or opportunities within our grocery space, our C-store space, or our retail space. You know, whether it's opening doors from a relationship standpoint, you know, both relationships that McCue would have or that we would have on our grocery, retail, food service side, or vice versa, we're able to leverage the power of the group, and not just from a within North America. Recently, we saw a significant win for one of our businesses in U.K. and Ireland from a convenience store standpoint, owing to a significant long-term relationship we had here in the U.S. with our convenience store business.
We look to leverage not just within North America, not just within a sector, but really, relationships across the globe. On behalf of John, Dale, and Bryon, and the entirety of the North American leadership team, thank you again for your time and spending some time with us, learning a bit more about the North American business, the competitive advantage that these higher-growth, higher-margin businesses drive for North America and for Bunzl globally, and for the opportunities to continue to do that across all of our sectors, both organically and via acquisition. Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you in a future Bunzl Insight Series. Have a great day. Thank you.