Utility exchange plans quick start.

Six utilities are banding together to form an electronic marketplace which should start trading within a month.

The SAP-based exchange will be run by European business-to-business (B2B) market operator Achilles for Anglian, South West and Yorkshire Water, PowerGen, GPU Power Distribution and the Environment Agency.

Anglian Water opted for Achilles because of its promised setup speed, said Nirmal Kotecha, head of the utility's supply chain management.

"We considered other options but homed in on Achilles. It is well ahead of others in its timing, so the opportunity for us to see the benefits will come much sooner," he said.

Colin Maund, managing director of Achilles, said the exchange will concentrate on supply-chain integration. "We believe that some online exchange specialists are oriented towards the buying process, which is where they can achieve a quick win. We will deliver that, but long-term, companies want supply chain integration," he said.

Earlier this month, United Utilities, Scottish Power and Northern Electric announced an online procurement consortium that is due to start trials in the third quarter of this year.

"Achilles is about starting from one competency and moving on from there," said David Evans, supply chain manager at PowerGen. "We can't do everything at once, but as our experience develops we will look to take advantage of future developments."

The Achilles exchange is the first UK-based B2B deal for SAP, and is being developed in partnership with US catalogue specialist Requisite Technology.First published in Computing