Saint-Gobain awards preferred supplier status

CompAir has become one of just two preferred suppliers for compressed air equipment for the Saint-Gobain Group across Europe.

CompAir has become one of just two preferred suppliers for compressed air equipment for the Saint-Gobain Group across Europe.

The agreement gives CompAir the potential to supply equipment to more than 800 sites to businesses in Saint-Gobain's Glass, Building Materials and Distribution, Pipelines and High Performance Materials divisions.

To achieve preferred supplier status, CompAir had to meet a range of rigorous requirements on quality, price and product range but taking precedence was Saint-Gobain's desire to appoint suppliers able to match its breadth of geographical coverage.

Saint-Gobain, which has a Eur 33 billion turnover, has a presence in 47 countries with 180,000 employees worldwide.

Raj Neelakantan, based at Saint-Gobain Abrasives in Stafford, helped co-ordinate the procurement project and he explains the importance to the group of suppliers who can match its global reach: "By taking advantage of our globalisation we can maximise the cost effectiveness of our operations".

"When we are considering suppliers, we need to think of everyone, everywhere to find a solution that is beneficial for all the entities involved".

"It is important, therefore, that we have suppliers who can deal with the bigger picture with the ability to co-ordinate their business on a group-wide basis, offering us one main contact to provide multi-national account management and reporting".

Cost of ownership also figured very strongly in the choice of equipment supplier.

Saint-Gobain created a computer program which each potential supplier tendering had to complete to provide data that would illustrate the total cost of equipment, including utilities, over a three year period.

Another of the selection criteria was the ability to provide "over the fence" compressed air, as Raj Neelakantan explains: "There will be opportunities where our operational businesses will want to do away completely with the ownership of compressed air equipment and simply treat compressed air as another utility to be paid for on a usage basis".

"A number of the companies we considered were deselected because they could not take on this element of the contract".

CompAir's account management team for Saint-Gobain is headed by Thierry Bouzac and key account managers have been appointed for each of Saint-Gobain's territories.

Orders have already been received from operations in Spain and Belgium, with a significant number of new projects already in the pipeline.

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