What is the idea behind the competence centre and how will it work?
Hans-Jürgen Moog: With REWE and PENNY in particular, we are an important part of the agricultural supply chain, serving as an interface between our suppliers – agriculture – and our customers – the consumer. With more than 50 million customer interactions per week in Germany alone, we are able to act as a barometer of consumer wishes and understand their needs perfectly.
Emilie Bourgoin: And in respect of our suppliers, REWE Group’s almost 100-year history as a cooperative in Germany shapes the way we manage relationships. We have always had strong local roots and therefore maintain strong and sustainable relationships with farmers. We understand their needs and concerns as well as the limits of the system. The logical next step, therefore, was for us to pool and integrate our expertise and leverage our diverse networks to find new paths.
With the establishment of our competence centre, we are taking communication to a whole new level by pooling our expertise and combining it with that of our strong partners. It is about communicating with candour and interacting as equals.
The centre will bring together farmers, agriculturists, practitioners, people from the processing industry and from the REWE Group to actively encourage new ideas. To this end, we are creating a strong triangle comprising an advisory committee of experts, a department to coordinate the advisory committee, and an internal steering committee to maintain a close connection with the operational side of the retail business and keep everything on the right track.
Hans-Jürgen Moog: The role of the advisory committee is to provide inspiration, develop ideas and also evaluate the feasibility of potential projects. Alongside the advisory committee of experts, the steering committee, as the internal decision-making body, will assume responsibility for the strategic coordination of all projects. This will help to anchor agricultural expertise even more strongly within the REWE Group and facilitate the development of effective and innovative best practices.
The long-term goal is to develop specific projects together with partners from the agricultural sector to stimulate sustainable German agriculture. By working shoulder to shoulder with the producers, we want to move from mere ideas to actual products in our markets, which will make a tangible contribution to the modern transformation of agriculture.