News came overnight Tuesday of a strike in Australia which spiked the European gas market yesterday – https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/lng-exports-at-risk-as-woodside-and-chevron-strikes-loom-20230809-p5dv3n.  You will see other articles if you Google. Last year the same strike was not settled until late September. The reason this affects Europe is that China takes 85%+ of Australian production and without that supply China will outbid Europe for LNG supplies from Qatar which is 40% of European supply. You have time to wait if you wish to see if the m ..read more

The EBDS Application Deadline – 2 days left to apply – does it apply to my business? The Energy Bills Discount Scheme primarily relates to what are referred to as Energy Intensive industries – stuff like glass making, plastics etc. where they use huge amounts of energy.  If you are categorised under one of the sectors detailed here, you are eligible to apply.  You just need to check your SIC code (as recorded at Companies House) against the list It also relates if you have insatlled a Heat Network in to any of your properties.  You’ll know if you have a Heat Network as it ..read more

One of the problems that a lot of people experience is that over time their supplier base gets very flabby. By flabby, what I mean is that you’ve got too many suppliers. Within that there are too many transactions, not just caused by the number of suppliers, but also caused by not managing those suppliers and telling them what your requirements are, which means that they are not invoicing you in an efficien ..read more

Our client the United Synagogue operates 50 sites, the majority of which are within inside the M25. They have been a client of The Procurement Group since 2006 and we value the long-term relationship that we have with them. The Procurement Group have been saving UK businesses money for over 20 years using our procurement management techniques to drive down their business costs. In this instance, the United Synagogue had no formal strategy for acquiring photocopiers and The Procurement Group identified this, which led to this project starting. The main issue was that every site had its own con ..read more

The UK has the 43rd fastest broadband in the world and is 6th out of the 7 G7 countries with only Italy being slower. That said, Europe is still by far and away the fastest. All 29 countries measured in Western Europe were in the top half of the table, countries in the region taking eight of the top ten spots in the world for internet speed. The regional average speed of 90.56Mbps makes it the fastest of the 13 global regions overall. The data was derived from over 1.1 billion speed tests taken in the 12 months up to 30 June 2021 and spanning 224 countries. The post UK could do better with bro ..read more

It’s clear that the signs were there for all to see if a recent article from px Group is to be believed. They should know as they operate a number of assets that feed in to the National Grid and claim that there were no fewer than 6 margin calls from National Grid – times when forecasted half hourly supply will not meet forecasted demand – in the winter of 20/21 vs 2 total in the whole period from 2011-2019! Sure, we’ve been caught in a perfect storm now as i) the weather has meant a lack of wind supply at the same time as ii) Asia has increased it’s requirement for gas while emerging fro ..read more

Reading time: 4 mins Outcome: cheaper, more accurate bills   £4.5m. Could your business deal with that fine? The Low Down Last month British Gas Business agreed were penalised £4.5 million for failing to deliver smart meters to their large business customers. I could tell you the differences between meters and about the art meters have inspired. However, worrying about that kind of information is only necessary for my team at The Procurement Group and me. Although, we do not focus on art! Plus, I promised I would keep the reading time to 4 minutes. What does the penalty mean for your b ..read more

The larger your business, the more leverage you have with suppliers. Instead of suppliers manipulating their pricing for maximum profits, you’re able to use your spend knowledge to leverage buyer power, bringing cost savings to your business, while still making it a valuable proposition for suppliers to favour working with you. It all starts with categorisation. Using categorisation of sales to leverage bulk price discounts 1) Item categorisation It’s one thing to list an item but it’s quite the other to tag it to the right category. One way to categorise items being purchased is to us ..read more

Businesses across England are set to benefit in reduced water savings, and enhanced services when the new retail water market emerges. There’s no fixed date as of yet for when England introduces the retail sector for water. It’s expected to be sometime around April of 2017. When that happens, you could see your bill drop and quite possibly by a considerable amount. There may be some business owners dreading the change though, thinking that it’s going to be just another utility, invoice and more suppliers, adding up to increased administration costs. When there are admin costs, there’s saving ..read more

Market fundamentals prevailed over traders on Monday and the market saw significant drops Wholesale electricity prices are now below their previous low point on 2/6/23 although gas is still single digit % points above that benchmark level There will inevitably be some winter volatility as temperatures drop but given sluggish Asian demand, the good stocks of LNG plus 8 cargoes arriving in the UK in the next week, our position remains that the market fundamentals will rule over the traders and prices will continue to drop. Gas: An expected drop in Gas for Power demand of aroun ..read more