Ahold Delhaize Releases 2021 Annual Report
Retail conglomerate Ahold Delhaize has published its 2021 Annual Report, which provides an overview of the company’s financial and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance over the past year. The report will be on the agenda of Ahold Delhaize’s April 13 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders.
“I am proud of our performance and what we have been able to achieve in 2021,” said Ahold Delhaize CEO Frans Muller. “Despite expectations that the world would return to pre-pandemic life, COVID-19 continued to have a major impact in our brands’ markets – and kept our people very busy. I have enormous appreciation for associates in stores, distribution centers and support offices across Ahold Delhaize and its brands who worked so incredibly hard to serve the needs of customers and communities.”
During 2021, as consumer trends in regard to cooking and eating at home, shopping online, and healthy eating have endured and evolved, and convenience continued to rise in importance, Ahold Delhaize’s banners enhanced their online propositions, delivery services, and click-and-collect locations, and rolled out new loyalty programs to enable customers to shop whenever and wherever they want.
Additionally, as associates, customers and shareholders became even more aware of the need to ramp up the transition to a sustainable food system, Ahold Delhaize leaned into its climate strategy and brought forward its net-zero carbon emissions target for scope 1 and 2 by 10 years to 2040. As part of the retailer’s belief that what’s healthy for people is healthy for the planet, another recalibrated goal is the increased target for healthy own-brand food to account for at least 55% of sales by 2025.
A major milestone for Ahold Delhaize during 2021 was updating its long-term Leading Together strategy and key medium-term commitments during its Investor Day last November. The growth and investment plan includes bigger investments in digital, automation and state-of-the-art infrastructure to drive innovation and support the retailer’s accelerated growth plans to 2025.
Ahold Delhaize’s family of local brands serves 55 million customers each week, both in stores and online, in the United States, Europe and Indonesia. Together, these brands employ more than 413,000 associates in 7,452 grocery and specialty stores. Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of Zaandam, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize, operates more than 2,000 stores across 23 states and is No. 10 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. Its brands are Food Lion, FreshDirect, The Giant Co., Giant Food, Hannaford, Stop & Shop, Peapod and Retail Business Services.
