Bunzl (opens in a new tab) has spent the last two decades growing through acquisition. Since 2004, it has completed more than 220 deals across 32 countries, building a global distribution network that spans food service, grocery, retail, healthcare, safety and cleaning.
With £11.8 billion in annual revenues and roughly 27,000 employees worldwide (opens in a new tab), the scale is extraordinary.
But growth at that speed and scope creates its own structural challenge. Each acquisition brings new capabilities, new geographies and new customers.
It also brings new systems, new processes and a new set of touchpoints for the enterprise buyers who work across multiple parts of the Bunzl network. Over time, that adds up.
For large customers buying from several Bunzl subsidiaries, the experience could be fragmented. This is why BunzlOne (opens in a new tab) was built.
In this conversation, Frank Daamen (opens in a new tab), Digital Director at Bunzl Retail Industry and founder of BunzlOne, explains how the teams built the platform, why they partnered with Mirakl and what results they've had so far.
The fragmentation tax
In B2B distribution, complexity often accumulates quietly. Each new subsidiary, each new ERP system and each new pricing structure adds a layer that enterprise buyers eventually have to navigate on their own.
For Bunzl's largest customers, that navigation was real. Purchasing across multiple Bunzl Operating companies (OpCos) meant dealing with separate product catalogs without shared taxonomy, multiple order portals and logins, inconsistent pricing displays despite group-level enterprise contracts, and a separate invoice per subsidiary at the end of every month.
- separate product catalogs without shared taxonomy
- multiple order portals and logins
- inconsistent pricing displays despite group-level enterprise contracts
- and a separate invoice per subsidiary at the end of every month.
The cost lands directly on the buyer's procurement operations and day-to-day efficiency. And it creates a buying experience that does not reflect the strength of the supplier behind it.
Bunzl recognized the gap. Rather than working around it, the company chose to architect a solution built for the scale it had already achieved.
One catalog. One order. One invoice.
Launched in April 2026, BunzlOne is a unified B2B marketplace that brings multiple Bunzl OpCos together behind a single buying experience for enterprise customers.
The platform delivers three things that previously required managing multiple relationships:
- One catalog — real-time product availability and enterprise-specific pricing across all connected OpCos, regardless of the underlying ERP, WMS or PIM systems each subsidiary uses. A unified taxonomy layer creates a consistent customer-facing experience without requiring OpCos to change anything internally.
- One order — a single cart can contain products from multiple OpCos, with orders automatically routed to the right subsidiary for fulfillment. The buyer never sees the routing.
- One invoice — a consolidated bill from Bunzl per delivery, with a single payment run, as if the buyer were dealing with one supplier. Behind the scenes, payment orchestration settles funds to each OpCo based on fulfillment.
OpCos remain fully autonomous throughout. BunzlOne sits on top of existing systems through an integration layer, not instead of them. OpCos set their own pricing and manage their own catalog contributions. What changes is what the customer sees — and what they no longer have to do themselves.
Frank Daamen describes the platform's purpose in three words: clarity, control and connection.
"Clarity, because our clients currently face significant complexity when ordering B2B products, and we want to simplify that.", he explains. "Control because the OpCos stay in control — they can set the prices, they set the products in the catalog. And connection because we connect all the different OpCos, suppliers and clients to each other on one unified platform. But also behind the scenes, we're connecting all the different ERP, PIM and WMS systems to one unified platform."
The partnership behind the platform
Building a platform of this complexity required more than the right architecture. It required a technology partner that understood orchestration at scale: the ability to connect systems that were never designed to talk to each other, route orders intelligently across independent legal entities and present the whole thing as a coherent experience for the buyer.
Mirakl (opens in a new tab) serves as the order orchestration layer within BunzlOne. For Daamen, the decision was straightforward: "We need a partner that shares our vision, knows what orchestration is and has the technology in place."
The alignment went beyond capability. "From day one, they understood our vision of BunzlOne, and it felt like a very good partnership from the start."
That shared understanding matters when building something that spans multiple subsidiaries, multiple systems and multiple commercial relationships. BunzlOne is not a standard deployment. It is a deliberate orchestration of a complex, multi-entity ecosystem.
Ready for scalable growth
BunzlOne is live, with Jumbo Supermarkets (opens in a new tab) as its first enterprise customer in the Netherlands.
The early result, according to Frank Daamen, is exactly what the platform was designed to deliver: "Simplicity. We now have one catalog, one order and one invoice per delivery."
The day-to-day business impact is equally direct: "We're now ready for scalable growth." That readiness is built into the architecture. The platform was designed to progressively onboard additional OpCos clients and their third-party suppliers, without re-engineering the foundation.
The same structure that serves one customer and one OpCo today is the foundation for a broader network across Bunzl's European operations.
Turning complexity into an edge
Bunzl's acquisition strategy has been a proven engine of growth for two decades. The story of BunzlOne is not about fixing a broken business. It's about a company that looked at the structural complexity its success had created and chose to turn it into something better.
By building a unified orchestration layer that preserves OpCo autonomy, delivers a seamless buying experience to enterprise customers and opens the door to a broader supplier ecosystem, Bunzl has transformed what could have been a persistent friction point into a genuine competitive differentiator.
Enterprise buyers get simplicity. OpCos keep control, clients get a true one-stop shop and the platform is built to scale with the ambition behind it.
Contact us (opens in a new tab) to discover how B2B commerce orchestration could work across your distribution network.
