How Montel Prices help procurement managers set energy buying strategies

Who are you and what does your business do?

My name is Jens Bergmann. I manage global energy procurement at Knauf, which is one of the leading global businesses in the building industry. I'm responsible for the energy procurement, which means power, gas and thinking about renewables for all of our sites, in all of the countries we operate in.

What challenges does Knauf face in energy markets?

Over the last four years, since the energy crisis, energy has become a big topic. So senior management, CEOs are asking for information and we need to make that information available. So that means we need to source the latest updates and be able to understand it before we share.

Really the challenge comes down to having enough information and time. We don't have time to search the internet for information we need, so this is why we use Montel. We know where we get the information from, we get the data, we get the news.

On a more practical level, we need to know the value of our portfolios. In order to value them, we have to know Power prices, natural gas prices across Europe and if possible,also outside of Europe. We then need to take a look at weather forecasts, gas storages, fundamentals and how many power plants will not be running in the next couple of weeks.

You can't find this sort of information in the newspapers, but the good news is we do find it all at Montel.

What attracted Knauf to Montel?

It's the user experience and the user interface - it's easy to use. You have your news sections, you have your prices, you also have your regional sections when you look for other countries and you can personalise your pages. That way, when you log-in every morning, you have everything you need in the overview you set up. I only have to look at the relevant parts and I am ready to go. Within 3, 4, 5 minutes I know what is going on and I'm more or less prepared to kick off the day. I also like that you can play around with the price charts and use different charting techniques for example.

Can you identify a time where Montel really helped you?

When when the war in the Ukraine started, people were asking what is going on the very next day. Of course, there was a lot of news on the main media channels, but this didn't help us understand the impacts on Knauf.

However, as a team we were focused. By using Montel we were able to see the impacts on energy immediately as it showed us how prices were moving during the day. This meant that we were prepared when people were asking us questions about business impacts and could share regular updates with them easily.

What do you value most working with us?

Whenever we have questions about anything, it could be the invoice, where to find the data or how to use the excel integration, we get answers straight away by email or phone.

Even when I ask a simple question, I get an invitation for 60 minutes. Usually we don't use the 60 minutes, but you take time for your clients and I appreciate that a lot.