European business-to-business e-commerce procurement platform Mercateo has opened subsidiaries in two new markets and expanded in a third.

The Germany-based group has established subsidiaries in Italy and Spain and opened up its platform in Belgium to more customers as it responds to growing customer demand for digital procurement solutions in the B2B world.

The platform launched in Belgium just over a year ago, but until recently has only been available to customers connected to Mercateo via the Open Catalog Interface, a platform that connects supplier hosted catalogs to business buyers systems via the internet and allows product data to be transferred directly from the supplier’s catalog to buyers’ backend systems. Now the platform – which offers about 3.4 million products in Belgium – is open to all business customer segments, meaning small-and medium-sized businesses can make use of the integrated approval process and multi-user capability for their purchases – although this will be limited to Flemish language users for the time being. Previously, only large business customers with 1,000 or more employees were able to access and purchase through the e-procurement system.

While Mercateo has been operating in Italy prior to the establishment of a local subsidiary, the creation of the Spanish subsidiary marks the platform’s entry into this market, meaning that Mercateo is now available in 13 European countries.

Founded in 1999, Mercateo now offers more than 21 million products Europe-wide in categories such as office supplies and equipment; maintenance, repairs and operations, or MRO products that companies use to maintain their facilities; construction; industrial supplies; hotel and catering; computing and electronics; and medical supplies.

Customers can order products from such suppliers as custom printing service VistaPrint, stamp manufacturer Glatz Stamp and office supplies manufacturer Durable through Mercateo.com.

Andy Braithwaite is editor-at-large of Office Products International, where this article first appeared before it was slightly edited to appear in B2BecNews. The original version can be viewed at OPI.net.