Our New Game Plan

The current Group-wide business strategy – the New Game Plan – was rolled out in early 2010. Built around the three pillars of Growth, Efficiency and Sustainability, it reflects our business' global nature and was designed to help us achieve our vision for Delhaize Group— "Nutritious, healthy, safe, affordable and sustainable. Together we deliver the best of Delhaize for life."

We added the word 'sustainable' in 2011 to ensure it is embedded in our business worldwide.

Overview of growth

We have always believed that growing our business is an opportunity to increase our positive impact. Sustainability is a critical tool to deliver growth in a responsible way. Growth means expanding our presence in key markets and meeting customer needs by evolving the products we sell. Our private brand products are increasingly a major growth area. We have direct influence over how we source, develop and sell these products, so we can accelerate both their market and sustainability performance.

Overview of efficiency

Improving our efficiency increases our sustainability and often results in cost savings. It involves optimizing and standardizing our Group-wide systems and processes. Up the value chain this means using fewer resources and reducing our energy consumption. Down the value chain this enables us to make the products we sell both more affordable and sustainable.

Overview of sustainability

The next steps in our sustainability journey are defined by our 2020 strategy. It builds on the great progress we have made already on our Sustainability pillar since 2009 and sets more aggressive targets in our areas of big impact, such as private brand products. Ultimately this strategy will be our roadmap for embedding sustainability deeply into how we do business. An introduction to the 2020 strategy can be found in the ‘Looking Forward to 2020’ section.

Since 2008 we have framed our strategic approach to sustainability around Products, People and Planet. Within this our materiality process defines six Group-level focus areas. We also recognize our responsibility to address resource use and to support the communities in which we work. Managed at the operating company level, this enables a more flexible, local approach.