Local firms and companies with an Australian presence show little sign of flagging despite soft economic conditions
Brambles has inked a new three-and-a-half year deal with Xchanging at a busy time in the international procurement space.
The contract follows Xchanging’s delivery of procurement services to Brambles’ CHEP Europe subsidiary for the last five years.
“As part of the contract, Xchanging and Brambles will enter into a co-sourcing agreement to strengthen procurement capabilities and drive spend-efficiencies,” Xchanging says.
The co-sourcing team will help to integrate and standardise procurement processes for Brambles’ business across the Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Latin America sectors, for its indirect spending categories.
Xchanging will help to identify and deliver global and regional sourcing initiatives to reduce overall non-core procurement costs across Brambles’ global business units.
“Brambles has set out to improve strategic and tactical procurement globally,” Brambles vice president, global procurement Pranil Vadgama says.
“An important factor in our decision to partner with Xchanging was its delivery model.”
Meanwhile, Australian energy firm Liquefied Natural Gas Limited’s Magnolia LNG subsidiary has updated its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal with SK E&C Group, in a move that will also see SKEC and Kellogg Brown & Root and form an EPC Joint Venture to deliver the 8 million tonnes a year four-train Magnolia LNG Project in the US state of Louisiana.
Those agreements come four weeks after Optimum Procurement Group, another multinational with an Australian presence, revealed it has sealed a five-year procurement outsourcing contract with international facilities management provider OCS.
The contract award follows on from OCS outsourcing vehicle fleet management to Optimum in 2013.