David Lunt, managing director
PH: What are the key elements of your buying group?
DL: We have two companies in the group – National Buying Consortium (NBC) and National Distribution Network (NDN). The group is an independent, member-owned business whose members service retail, foodservice, hospitality, e-commerce and export channels, delivering directly to more than 45,000 outlets. NBC takes care of all matters relating to the activities of a typical buying group, and NDN is our route-to-market solution. All members of the group are shareholders and they receive benefits of membership without any management fees.
What are your unique selling points?
For our members, we operate as a consortium, which means we can undertake business activities and achieve results way beyond the resources of a single member. The benefits of this are clear – our members get the brands they need, and at prices that allow them to be competitive. In addition, we provide specific support through the NBC Toolkit so that our members can market their businesses to their customers.
We offer these benefits:
• Our members get access to brands at competitive prices and realistic quantities.
• Our suppliers’ brands get access to our members through one contact point.
Brands get to their consumers through a safe and flexible supply chain with reduced credit risk exposure, centralised order-to-cash facilities and centralised bulk purchasing.
In this way, we operate as a fully integrated business for members and suppliers.
Read more: NBC reassert benefits at conference
How have you expanded and attracted new members over the past 12 months?
We have expanded carefully, making sure potential new members share our values and will add strength to the group. As part of this, we introduced an associate membership category that allows the group and potential new members to get to know each other before the last step of shareholding.
What do your members think of the group?
One of our more recent members, 6868 Fast Food, had this to say: “We considered very carefully the various options we saw for joining a buying group and we chose NBC because we felt like we would be part of the family, not just another number. In addition, the flexibility of its associate membership option really provided us with a ‘yes please’ decision without a major outlay of first-year management fees.”
What do suppliers think of the group?
One of our more recent additions as a new supplier, Capri-Sun, said: “Since we started trading in 2024, our sales through the NBC group have grown consistently each period. We have surpassed all expectations and the trading members have been engaged and keen to collaborate with us. We set up supply and invoicing via NDN right at the start and this has been the basis of driving our growth with the group.
“The team have been really efficient and positive to work alongside. This allows time for us to focus on driving end-user engagement to develop further when ordinarily members might not be able to meet the minimum-order-quantity criteria.”
What are your plans to help members over the next 12 months?
Working to improve the supply chain processes between our members and suppliers. By providing the services of a fully integrated business, we truly believe we are the alternative buying group.
