Data Yard

About Data Yard
Data Yard is the UK building materials industry's shared product data exchange, operated by Building Materials Digital Services Ltd (BMDS Ltd) - a joint venture owned equally by the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) and the National Merchant Buying Society (NMBS). It is industry-owned infrastructure rather than a commercial software product: neutral by design and built to complement existing systems rather than replace them.

What we do
The UK building materials supply chain has long struggled with inconsistent product data, multiple merchant formats, manual data entry and incomplete information - while the data required of suppliers keeps growing, from ERP and e-commerce content to compliance and sustainability data.
Data Yard solves this with a single principle: publish once, distribute everywhere. Suppliers publish structured product data once, and merchants, buying groups and connected systems access that same consistent source. Suppliers retain full ownership of their data; Data Yard manages the infrastructure and distribution.

How we support the industry
For suppliers, we remove the burden of sending separate feeds to every customer and provide a clear pathway to better data through our Product Data Standardisation Template and its five Data Levels. For merchants, we deliver consistent, structured data that improves e-commerce catalogues and compliance. For the wider sector, we create a measurable, standards-based framework for data quality and interoperability - and help suppliers prepare for emerging requirements such as Digital Product Passports (DPP).

Standards and GS1 alignment
Data Yard is built on recognised standards. It uses ETIM classification for structured technical attributes and supports GS1 standards for product identification, including GTIN - ensuring product data is consistent, comparable and interoperable across the supply chain.