When retail giants Ahold and Delhaize came together in 2016, after years of will-they-won’t-they speculation, management was keen to promote the unified brand’s ‘Better Together’ strategy, where synergies in areas like services and logistics would lead to increased savings.
“To me, where there is a real benefit is [in] maximising how we can work together with our suppliers,” chief executive Dick Boer told ESM in its first issue of last year.
“It’s about asking whether a supplier that is already producing for the Belgian market can also supply efficiently for the Dutch market,” Boer continued.