🥕 Ahold Delhaize CSO Alex Holt on Scaling Sustainability & AI in Retail | CGF 2025 🌍

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we're coming to you once again from the Vusion Group booth here at the Consumer Goods Forum in Amsterdam.

And we are so fortunate to have the lovely Alex Holt, the Chief Sustainability Officer at AJO Delhez, standing right between us and taking some time with us today.

Thank you, Alex.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Fabulous to be here.

Yeah.

Yes, it's great to meet you.

I mean, we were just checking out your bio on LinkedIn.

I mean, you have quite the distinguished retail career.

Why don't you tell our audience about it?

I love, love retail.

Started off in the shop floor in Marks and Spencer's in the UK.

Right, right.

When I was maybe 16 and then spent a lot of time in supermarkets in the uk, Tesco for quite a bit.

Okay.

And then I made the decision to head over with my then partner, now husband to Australia.

Glad it worked out.

That's good.

Yes, very good.

To Woolworths Group, so a big retail company over there across Australia and New Zealand.

Okay.

And then a year ago we moved from there to Netherlands to Amsterdam to hotel.

Hey.

Wow.

Oh my gosh.

Well, let's, let's tackle kind of the big picture view here and big topic of the show, which is sustainability.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about how you think about some of the most immediate issues that your team is facing when it comes to sustainability.

Yeah, happy to.

So last year we launched our Growing Together strategy back in April last year.

Now of that we've got six strategic priorities, one of which is what we call Healthy Communities and Planet.

And we ground everything we do under Healthy Communities and Planet.

And so for us, that comes really down around how we help customers make healthier choices.

And so what I mean by that is like the little nudges.

So if you're shopping online, you're buying this product, you might get a little pop up that says, well, have you thought about this product?

Also then around decarbonization and how we're helping then the transition to a more sustainable food system.

That can sound like a lot of words.

So what does that mean?

Yeah, yeah, that kind of.

That means if you think about it, customers come into our shops today and they buy their products and they want the best possible products at the best possible taste, at the best possible price.

Now what my role is is to make sure that in 100 years time, we've still got a food business, we've still got products that can be sold at the Most cheapest price at the best price at the best quality for customers.

That's kind of like how it comes to life.

Yeah.

And what are some of the things that you're doing or advice that you have for other retailers here that are at the show that are kind of trying to tackle, like, where do we begin?

Does it start with kind of the growth, the overall strategic plan?

Like, how does it fit into the greater context for them?

Yeah, absolutely.

Great question, because you can get overwhelmed in this space quite easily.

Right.

And so it starts with understanding your business and really being ruthless on.

On prioritisation.

Okay.

So just being really clear on what are the areas that you really want to have an impact that are relevant to your company.

So a food business or a food retailer, that may be some certain things could be very different.

If you're in clothing as a retailer, quite different topics.

So that's the first piece.

The second piece is that sustainability.

And you will have.

Hopefully you've seen at cgf.

Yes, it is incredibly collaborative because these are topics that cannot be solved by one company in isolation.

Right.

You've got anything we do, you've got suppliers involved, you've got customers involved, you've got retailers involved, you've got agriculture, you've got so many different things.

So do reach out would be my advice.

Reach out to others.

And what are some examples of that collaboration?

Because we have heard that, because the other part I'd mentioned too is competitors come into that equation as well.

So what are some examples that you can share of bringing that collaboration to life that are salient for our audience?

So a couple of good examples are a tangible one.

So over in our US business, so we've got five brands over there, we've recently been doing pilots on regenerative agriculture.

Okay.

We've been doing them with the likes of Danong, Kellanova, General Mills, and they're on wheat, dairy, potatoes with Campbells.

And so that's really around actually how do we pilot these things to then be able to scale them?

So that's like a really tangible example for the us.

There's then locally within Europe, where we are now, really good examples around how do you engage with your suppliers?

And so what we'll do is we'll take learnings.

Let's use an example that is quite complex.

Yeah, yeah.

So we've then what we've identified is something called climate hubs.

So they're hubs that then any of our suppliers can go to.

And these hubs have then got webinars on them.

They've got videos, they've got toolkits, and they're open not just for our suppliers, they're open for any retailer to use.

Any supplier to use.

So again, a kind of a really tangible way of how you can collaborate.

The last bit was maybe at cgf.

Oh, okay.

So through cgf, great forum for collaboration.

Sounds like it.

So the coalitions they've got are really like a tangible example from this week.

This week they launched the Common Data Framework was launched, which was retailers as, you know, competitive.

Quite unusual to get retailers in the same room together talking around, how do we come up with a common definition for what measurement should be, what framework should be?

Right, so that's been launched this week.

Yeah, I mean it's almost unheard of having been a retailer in the us Like, I can't ever remember doing that.

So like paint the picture for our audience.

Is that what you're doing at cgf?

Are you sitting across the table, like having those discussions with the competition in terms of like, hey, here's how we need to think about things, here's how we need to do things differently.

Can we align on some common goals here?

Is that what you're doing?

That is exactly what you're doing.

So I get it.

I spent 15 years of my career in trading in retail and not in the sustainability space.

And so the thought of being sitting on a table with your competitors talking about something, I was like, God, this is, how does this work really?

But it's all pre competitive and it's all.

You're deliberately talking about things that require a systems change.

And so in order to get that change, you need to have people coming together.

Right.

Alex, do you and all the other like chief sustainability officers at other companies have like a text thread going or like a WhatsApp group where you're just asking each other these questions we should do?

I love that idea.

Not yet.

I mean, Chris's question.

I'm just like, you know, you're probably the ones, I assume who are kind of leading the charge and leading the connection.

Or is it just kind of by happenstance at events like this that those topics or those collaborations are happening?

So it's definitely coming through some CSOs.

But because these are also business problems.

Yeah, they're not just sustainability problems.

They are problems or things that we're focused on because they're relevant for our business.

They're around long term business resilience.

Which is why then this is a CEO led forum, because they're so relevant for business.

Well, that's why they're on the agenda.

You mentioned a few things.

Regenerative agriculture.

We've talked to a lot of people about, you know, circularity and improved packaging, ways to kind of really start to target some of the sustainability goals that the retailers and brands here have.

Are there any that you feel like are better and more ready to scale than others?

Especially for some of our audience who's based in the U.S.

like, what would you or even your U.S.

chains that you have, what has really kind of taken off for them or what seems like the most attainable thing to lead with.

So that there are some really good examples with tech that's also driving change here.

One of them would be around dynamic pricing.

Okay, so what dynamic pricing does on so electronic shellfish labels.

Dynamic pricing then enables the product in that store to be marked down at the time prior to when it's gone past its use by date.

So then that is what it's doing.

It's in helping great value for customers.

It's helping productivity, but it's also then helping you reduce food waste.

So that's a really, really good business case and a really good example.

Yeah, there's then in another one that I really love and I think it's got so much opportunity is around the agriculture space and again, AI being used in agriculture and precision farming.

And so strawberries.

I hope you both like strawberries.

Oh, yes, Love strawberries.

Strawberries, yes.

One of the things I hate about strawberries, though, is that they go off too quickly.

If I don't eat them quickly enough or me and my husband don't eat them, they go off.

Yes.

Right.

So they do.

Part of that is because of the cold chain when you're picking them.

And if they come out of the cold chain, what happens with precision Ag?

It means that then actually they can work through when is the right time to pick the crop?

What is the taste going to be like and what's the quality going to be like?

So they know exactly then when to be able to pick it, which means you get less food weights, you get better tasting product and at the time when the customer wants it.

Now that's cool.

Innovation.

That's starting to happen as well.

I like that science.

I'll have more ripe strawberries.

More strawberries.

More strawberries, please.

Yes.

Maybe a little champagne with those strawberries too.

Ann, you know, it's the end of the conference today.

That's our last interview, I think champagne and strawberries on order.

All right.

So but I want to get, you know, the one Part of this too though is how do you measure it?

Like how do you measure and track against your goals?

How do you communicate the progress towards your goals throughout your organization?

The whole nine yards on that.

How do you think about your milestones?

Okay, so starts with where our targets are.

So getting very prioritized targets in place for them.

We then interlinked into the business planning cycle.

So they're.

Business planning cycle.

Wow.

Okay, so it's part of that and then it goes down to brand level for us.

So you're putting the metrics down in the brands where the work happens and the accountability happens and that all flows through on the financial planning process.

We believe in transparency.

So both what that means internally is we get monthly dashboards, monthly progress updates, all the way down from brands get all this information.

But then we go out in our annual report as well, which we are CSRD compliance.

That doesn't mean it's a very long annual report.

Right.

So if you do, if you are interested in how transparent we are, you can take a look in there.

And what types of metrics are you talking about that end up in the jbps?

Just for our audience, maybe that isn't as far along in that process and maybe needs to think about how they rejigger their joint business plans to do this correctly.

Great.

So for health for us we have own brand healthy sales.

A penetration level of own brand healthy sales goes down to a brand level, goes into category level.

We're now changing and evolving it over the next year to total stuff store healthy sales.

So penetration that comes through from there.

Other metrics being the scope one and scope two.

And then equally they're measuring on our scope three.

So those would be the big ones.

So those are all encapsulated in those conversations.

Wow.

Food waste and so is plastic.

Wow.

That's.

Wow.

Okay, great.

Well Alex, one more question for you here.

What have you learned about and what advice do you have about motivating customers and internal teams about being more sustainable?

Firstly, keep it simple.

Okay.

Keep it easy and make it relevant.

And relevant.

So from a team perspective, the sustainability space loves long reports.

They love complex words, they love long reports.

They are hundreds of pages long.

So the most important thing for a team is to really simplify this right down, make it really relevant to them.

So, so if you're in buying or procurement, actually what are you going to do in your role with the products that you're buying so that you can make the plastic the most the right choice from a customer perspective, it's about helping them, it's about nudging them.

So for us, some of the things that we've done is there's everything from putting the transparency of the label, the health of the product on the label.

So Nutri scores in European brands, ours in our US and a plug for Guiding Stars.

If any brand is interested in it, it is open for anyone to use.

So they can absolutely reach out to.

You, eat what you cook, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, whenever we can, we always like to end on a high note with a little future prediction and also a little optimism, I think, today.

So I'm curious, as someone in the sustainability space, if you look three to five years out, what are you most optimistic about in terms of your role and your job?

Firstly, that there is a shift happening right now where we will see significant action within three years.

So that shift is happening on health and sustainability.

That train has run fabulous.

The second one, which I think is so, so cool, is the whole AI and data and the manual jobs that a lot of people are having to do at the moment.

That means they're not being able to work on the problems they actually, I think AI is going to be a huge, huge unlock for us to be able to simplify those roles coupled with help us unlock some of these really big challenges.

I think I was really excited by what the future is going to bring.

And, Alex, do you think you'll see health and sustainability kind of move at the same pace, or do you think one will kind of come before the other?

I'm curious what you think on that.

I think it will depend very much on the brand and the country that they're in because it is really relevant to your customers, to the suppliers that you're working with.

And so for us, I do think how health will move at more speed that might not be relevant for everywhere.

Okay, great.

All right, well, Alex, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you taking the time with us today.

Thanks again to Fusion Group for making all of our coverage here at Consumer Goods Forum possible.

And until tomorrow, be careful out there.