Lynx Purchasing is offering the education sector access to leading suppliers and targeted support, to help hard-pressed independent schools manage costs and improve cash flow.
With the sector spending £2bn on goods and services annually, Lynx can demonstrate that simple changes in purchasing policy can deliver savings of hundreds of thousands of pounds across a group of schools.
Best known as a purchasing specialist within the hospitality sector, Lynx is building on its established track record with a small number of education providers to actively promote its services to the independent sector as a whole, both fee-paying schools and academies.
Rachel Dobson, managing director of Lynx Purchasing, says: “When it comes to purchasing, every day’s a school day. Education operators have found themselves at the sharp end of the economic downturn, and some of the old rules need to be relearnt.
“Like the hospitality businesses we work with, they’re under financial pressure from challenges including higher national insurance, inflation, staffing costs, and the continual need for investment. In addition, since the start of 2025, they’ve had to factor in the imposition of VAT on private school fees. This either has to be passed on to parents, or factored into costs with a resulting hit on margins.”
In its new White Paper, “Back To School With Lynx Purchasing”, Lynx identifies the purchasing challenges facing the schools’ sector, as well as the way improvements to purchasing discipline can deliver significant savings.
At the same time, Lynx has assembled a task force of leading suppliers across key purchasing areas for schools. These include food and drink, utilities and lighting, waste management, stationery, printing and photocopying, disposables and chemicals.
Dobson says: ”Many established hospitality suppliers already work with the education sector. However, we estimate that the UK’s 1,600 independent schools spend £2bn-plus annually on goods and services, with untapped potential for schools to achieve significant savings.
“Many schools are having to rethink their operations in order to avoid running at a loss. For some, this includes taking catering and other key services back in-house rather than pay the additional costs of outsourcing. To do that effectively, schools need to re-establish genuine partnerships with suppliers rather than simply sign off on third-party contracts and invoices.”
Already working with Lynx Purchasing is Inspired Learning Group (ILG). As it has expanded, ILG has ‘inherited’ a range of different contracts and agreements. Lynx’s purchasing specialists have audited ILG site-by-site, and by changing the main food supplier to the group, have achieved average savings of 10% with no impact on food quality.
ILG’s group operations manager Garth Wray says: “In addition, we were paying a percentage fee on every invoice to our previous procurement company. With Lynx’s no contract, no fee model, that amounts to additional very significant savings for us.”
On utilities, Lynx Purchasing has been able to negotiate new agreements at a number of ILG’s locations, achieving average savings of 30%, with plans to continue putting new utilities deals in place as existing contracts expire.
ILG is also seeing savings in a range of other purchasing areas though its partnership with Lynx. The group will achieve savings amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds on printing and copying costs through a new five-year agreement, with the savings increasing as more sites switch.
Garth adds: “Crucially this is all being achieved without any compromise on product quality or standards. It’s not so much that the education sector has been complacent about purchasing in the past, but perhaps more that our priorities now need to change.
“For example, in hospitality, the first thing a chef does when planning a menu is work out what their gross margin is going to be, and so they are very cost sensitive. As there is less price sensitivity in education chefs have been less reactive to cost changes, but things have changed and we all need to get much better at it.”
“We’re already achieving significant savings across the group, and we expect that to continue as we expand, as existing contracts end, and as we work with Lynx to identify more areas where we can make purchasing savings,”
The new White Paper “Back To School With Lynx Purchasing” is available FREE to download at www.lynxpurchasing.co.uk. For the full ILG case study, see https://lynxpurchasing.co.uk/inspired-learning-group-case-study/
