Big news out of Ahold’s shareholder meeting in Amsterdam, with more to come…

[hupso title=”BIG NEWS out of Ahold’s shareholder meeting, with more to come…” url=”https://ciw-online.org/blog/2015/04/ahold-big-news/”]

 

We’ll keep this short and sweet for now.

As you may remember, last week we posted a report on what was then our upcoming visit to Ahold’s annual shareholder meeting in Amsterdam.  Ahold is the Dutch parent company to several major US grocery chains, including northeastern supermarket icons Giant and Stop & Shop.  This was to be our fifth visit to the annual meeting, and past trips across the Atlantic had never proven boring.

This year was no exception, though with a far, far more positive twist!  The video above is from Ahold CEO Dick Boer’s opening remarks, in which he broke the news that Ahold representatives and the CIW have been in talks and that those talks appear to be headed toward a productive conclusion.  Lucas Benitez, representing the CIW, spoke later at the meeting, during the question and answer session, to confirm Mr. Boer’s comments:

Lucas_Ahold_Shareholder

My name is Lucas Benitez, and I am here representing the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program, the leading social responsibility program for protecting human rights in agricultural supply chains today.

I am happy to be able to report that we recently entered into serious discussions with company representatives about Ahold joining the Fair Food Program and we hope and believe that those talks will lead to an exciting new partnership in the near future, one that will, with Ahold’s leadership, benefit all relevant stakeholders in Ahold’s tomato supply chain. Thank you.

This is indeed very exciting news, albeit still a story in progress.  Stay tuned for much more in the days ahead as the story continues to unfold….