Mark Paterson began work at Bunzl Australia & New Zealand in 1997, working across several industries before finding his footing in the Healthcare space. In his current role, he’s responsible for overseeing the team sitting behind Bunzl’s National Corporate Healthcare accounts and providing customers with quality services and products that meet their needs.
Tell us about your career path at Bunzl.
I started at Bunzl in 1997 as the Key Account Manager for Queensland where I worked mainly with food processing and food retail customers. After moving into the Healthcare sector, I progressed into a business development role mainly looking after the hand hygiene category before managing a portfolio of large national healthcare accounts. Early in 2021 I began developing a team to manage our National Corporate Healthcare accounts and from there moved into the role of Sector Manager for Healthcare in early 2022.
When it comes to your role, what do you appreciate the most?
That by being part of the Bunzl team I can provide our healthcare customers with services and products that will then allow them to provide quality care for their residents and patients.
What are some of the most important considerations when it comes to new products for you?
When looking at a new product, the first thing I will always consider is whether the product fills an existing need in the market. Secondly, I look at the possible benefits that product will bring to healthcare providers. Lastly, and one of the biggest considerations, is whether the product will fit within the overall Bunzl Healthcare strategy.
What are some of your career highlights?
One of the things that I take pride in is my team’s part in ensuring that Bunzl is seen as a professional and reliable supply partner by major healthcare providers across Australia and New Zealand. Take the recent pandemic and all the difficulties that came with it – as Bunzl employees, we should be proud of the way we navigated those difficult circumstances, and how we represented the business and conducted ourselves during such a challenging period.
Are there any innovations in your industry that you’re particularly excited about?
One of the areas I find most exciting – and at the same time challenging – is the focus on sustainability in the healthcare sector. It’s exciting that a number of our customers are not only solely focused on just purchasing more sustainable products, but also have specific objectives to ensure they have measurable sustainable processes in place.
