Ahold Delhaize is having talks with its major name brand suppliers about an integration bonus and new purchase conditions that would work retroactively.
Huge demands
Ahold Delhaize nor the name brand manufacturers will say anything about the talks “on the record”, which makes sense as the commercial interests are humongous. Nevertheless, our Distrifood colleagues have caught some reverberations coming from the meeting rooms, straight from several anonymous suppliers.
What do those murmurs say? Ahold Delhaize wants to enforce an “integrations bonus” into its international suppliers, for example. The merger company also wants to negotiate new purchase conditions and wants those to work retroactively, back to 1 January 2016. As expected, it also wants a lump sum for the previous purchase condition differences between Belgium and the Netherlands.
These demands are not very surprising, but they do sound quite sturdy as suppliers wonder where their own merger advantages lie. On top of that, French partners are somewhat bothered by the fact that all talks are in English. To be continued…