Vice President Buying Alliances

Make a Difference as Vice President Buying Alliances

As our new Vice President Buying Alliance, you will play a pivotal role in strengthening Ahold Delhaize’s competitive edge. By maximizing the impact of our procurement alliance, aligning internal and external stakeholders, and ensuring seamless cooperation, you will create significant value for our brands.

About Ahold Delhaize
We’re Ahold Delhaize, one of the world’s largest food retail groups and a leader in both supermarkets and e-commerce. Together with our 17 strong local retail brands in the United States, Europe and Indonesia, we make a meaningful difference in the lives of our brands’ customers, our people and the world around us. We offer a highly dynamic, international work environment in which our associates thrive.

The Vice President Buying Alliances (Eurelec) represents the interests of our Ahold Delhaize (AD) Benelux brands such as Albert Heijn, Delhaize, Etos, Gall & Gall and Bol at the purchasing group Eurelec, where negotiations are conducted jointly at European level with major A-brand suppliers.

EURELEC Trading (Eurelec) is a European retail alliance based in Brussels and co-founded in 2016 by REWE Group (Germany) and E.LECLERC (France). In 2023, EURELEC welcomed Ahold Delhaize (Netherlands) as a third shareholder. Its purpose is to jointly negotiate European purchasing conditions with the largest international FMCG manufacturers present across several EU markets, on behalf of its shareholders for different countries (currently: Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Belgium and Netherlands). Eurelec Trading aims to create cross-country synergies and leverage the European single market to benefit consumers. It negotiates purchasing conditions for various product categories, including grocery, fresh & frozen goods, near-food products, and beverages. The alliance helps its members tackle price discrepancies across European countries, ensuring fair purchase prices and making food more affordable.

Key responsibilities

• Drives and coordinates negotiations for top national brands, ensuring competitive advantage through strategic supplier partnerships and value creation.
• Ensures seamless alignment between Albert Heijn & Delhaize, Eurelec, and shareholder partners REWE and Leclerc. Acts as a key orchestrator between external and internal stakeholders.
• Proactively identifies and drives critical internal procurement topics and alliance initiatives, resolving barriers to progress and ensuring timely execution across the organization.
• Keeps ahead of procurement trends and developments and explores new opportunities to obtain most value from the Eurelec alliance.
• Serves as the central point of contact between brands' commercial leadership and Eurelec, ensuring consistent communication, alignment of interests, and rapid decision-making.
• Collaborates regularly with Legal, Finance, IT, Public Affairs, and Sustainability functions to ensure compliance, coherence, and impact across all alliance-related activities.
• Ensures financial budgeting and clear and frequent reporting on the benefits in close cooperation with Commercial and Financial stakeholders at Albert Heijn & Delhaize as well as the Chief Financial Officer for Europe & Indonesia.
• Leads the preparation and coordination of key Eurelec board and Procurement Steering Committee (PSC) meetings, ensuring strategic clarity and effective decision-making.
• Ensures efficient coordination of weekly operational alignment meetings with Eurelec, REWE, Leclerc, and internal stakeholder groups, driving momentum on sourcing priorities.
• Monitors progress of agreed sourcing initiatives and short-term plans and regularly evaluates the effectiveness of the Eurelec alliance.
• Supports the CCO as well as the Brand Presidents in identifying and maximizing value capture opportunities across brands through the Eurelec alliance.
• Represents the Benelux brands in relevant initiatives with regards to national brands within Ahold Delhaize, aligning Eurelec efforts with broader enterprise goals.
• Manages and closely cooperates with the PMO role(s) at Albert Heijn and Delhaize on Eurelec topics and annual agenda.

Requirements

We believe you’ll succeed in this role if you bring:

• University Degree in Procurement, Commerce, Business Administration or relevant field is required. An MBA is strongly preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in sourcing, procurement, or a related field, in a fast-paced business, ideally in food/retail and/or a consumer-facing or service-driven business, and doing so for a company with significant size
• Deep knowledge of strategic sourcing and procurement principles and best practices, with the ability to understand complex sourcing, proactively plan for in trends and drive game-changing initiatives
• Ideally, experience in managing or co-leading international buying alliances, joint ventures or multi-party commercial partnerships—balancing diverse stakeholder interests while maximizing collective value
• Impeccable negotiation skills, able to build trust and value-based relationships with stakeholders
• Strong coordination and alignment skills and the ability to align navigate and manage multi-level governance structures (e.g., Boards, Steering Committees, etc.) and aligning priorities across independently operating partner organizations
• Exceptional gravitas and outstanding influencing and interpersonal skills; demonstrated history of implementing and delivering change in a complex/matrix organization, driving impact through others
• Strong communication skills in Dutch and English (both written and spoken); French is a plus
• Strong business acumen, financially savvy and a deep understanding of the reciprocity between sourcing and operational business

This person can reside in Belgium or in the Netherlands and will be required to be at the Eurelec HQ (Brussels), a minimum of two days per week.

What do we offer?

• To be courageous
• To live wholeheartedly
• To keep growing

What do you bring?

• Collaborative skills
• A solution-oriented attitude
• Business awareness

Why Ahold Delhaize?

• Huge Impact
• Work with fun and smart colleagues
• (Inter)national growth opportunities

At Ahold Delhaize and across our brands, diversity means more than demographics. We welcome differences in background, experience, thought and identity—including LGBTQ+, generational, neurodivergent, disability, nationality and more. You’re welcome here, just as you are.

What matters to us?

Ahold Delhaize is one of the world’s largest food retail groups and a leader in both supermarkets and e-commerce. Together, we help people eat well, save time and live better – it’s how we make a difference. And we do it because we care: for our customers, our people and the world around us.

Be courageous

"I realized how much impact you can truly have as an individual, working for such a huge international company.”
Colleague role

Live wholeheartedly

“The support this company has always offered means the world to me."
Colleague role

Keep growing

“I feel the freedom to show initiative, propose changes and try new things. Having that freedom gave me wings to fly.”
Colleague role