By Nick Hameury, Co-Founder & CEO of Funeral Europe, Spain

Most funeral directors spend their days helping families, not thinking about supply chains. Yet every funeral depends on one. Coffins, urns, refrigeration equipment, hearses, memorial products and countless smaller items all need to be available exactly when they are needed. When one link in that chain fails, everyone notices.

For decades, sourcing in the European funeral profession was remarkably local. Funeral directors worked with a small number of trusted suppliers, often in relationships that had existed for many years. Representatives visited regularly, catalogues arrived by post, and business was built on familiarity rather than comparison. It was a model based on trust, and there is still real value in that.
But the market has changed. In my work I speak almost daily with manufacturers and funeral directors across Europe, and the same pattern appears everywhere: the products used in a funeral today may be manufactured hundreds or even thousands of kilometres from where they are finally used. A coffin supplied to a funeral home in Germany is often produced in Poland or Romania. An urn sold in Spain may come from Italy or the Czech Republic. Refrigeration systems, lifting equipment and ceremonial products increasingly cross several borders before reaching the funeral director. The supply chain, in other words, has become European. The visibility of that supply chain has not kept pace.

How can funeral businesses navigate an increasingly international supply chain, discover new suppliers and build greater resilience? The full article explores why transparency matters, how digital platforms are changing access to the European market, and why better connections do not have to come at the expense of trust.

>> Read more in THANOS Magazine 3/2026 - pages 40-41

A More Connected European Funeral Supply Chain

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