Zaandam, the Netherlands, August 8, 2023 – Ahold Delhaize is proud to share that its MSCI ESG rating has been upgraded to AAA, coming from an AA rating. MSCI is a prominent benchmark in the sustainable financing world. As triple-A is the highest scoring range, for Ahold Delhaize, this indicates that it is a leader in its industry in managing the most significant ESG challenges and opportunities.
Ahold Delhaize CEO Frans Muller comments, “As MSCI's ESG rating is a primary research tool and a widely used benchmark by investors, Ahold Delhaize's ranking upgrade will help investors to understand the importance we place on the transformation to a healthy and sustainable food system and being a business that is fit for the future.”
An MSCI ESG rating measures a company’s resilience to long-term Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks. Companies are rated on an industry-relative AAA (leader) to CCC (laggard) scale according to their exposure and how well they manage those risks relative to peers. With this triple-A rating, Ahold Delhaize is in the top 7 percentile within the food retail industry. Learn more about MSCI ESG ratings here.
Industry materiality map
MSCI uses an industry materiality map, which includes a wide range of key ESG issues – in Ahold Delhaize's case, the food retail industry. Examples include Ahold Delhaize’s and its local brands’ goals and efforts in reducing carbon emissions in line with a trajectory of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, implementing opportunities in nutrition and health, ensuring Ahold Delhaize has great diverse talent and managing privacy and data security. All actions – small and large – have played a role in Ahold Delhaize's score.
What’s next
Ahold Delhaize Chief Sustainability Officer Jan Ernst de Groot comments, “Although we are proud of our rating, we know that there's more to achieve. Topics such as health, sustainability, human rights and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) are a central part of our company strategy, therefore it is important that we embed sustainability even more widely across our business.
To reach our ambitions set in our Leading Together strategy, we have committed to short- and long-term targets. These include further increasing healthy sales of our own-brand food products, eliminating food and plastic waste, aiming for 100% diverse and inclusive workplaces and reaching the science-based absolute reduction targets we have set for carbon emissions across all scopes.”
For more information on Ahold Delhaize's approaches to Health & Sustainability and ESG topics, visit our Annual Report.
Ahold Delhaize's approach to its ESG agenda
Ahold Delhaize's ESG ambitions and strategy are shaped by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), market knowledge from its great local brands and several ESG benchmarks, including MSCI, Sustainalytics, CDP and ISS-ESG. Ahold Delhaize also considers trends in our markets and around the world, feedback from stakeholders, and how we align with global frameworks such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
