LETTER FROM LEIRE MUGERZA

Chair of the Governing Council

We have laid solid groundwork at EROSKI over recent years to face new challenges and continue bringing value to consumers and society. By doing business in a different way, we work to contribute to a fairer, more cohesive and more sustainable society that can boast better health and wellbeing. With our original company structure, we have built a different governance model in which Employee and Consumer Partners constitute the two largest communities that form the organization. They have decision-making power in the initiatives we undertake, which are translated into concrete realities in our daily work. Because at EROSKI we believe people are of vital importance to our project. We aspire to integrate values into our company policies that place the people of our cooperative at its heart and ensure that our strategy and organization adequately combine these values with the necessary efficiency and profitability.

A good example of this is our updated Commitments to Health and Sustainability adapted to the new priorities and different needs of today in the field of food and consumption. We publicly established these commitments at the beginning of 2018 to mark the way forward in the coming years after listening to more than 7,500 Employee and Client Partners and stakeholders who participated in the process of creating them.

We believe in innovation to move forward with new solutions that improve the quality of life, health and wellbeing of consumers under the best conditions of quality, information and price, with a commitment to promoting the practice of sustainable consumption. That is why we have launched more than 20 measures to make this a reality. A commitment to health and sustainability present in our own brand, specialization in fresh foods, commitment to local production and an extensive range of options for a more varied diet. This commitment was also part of our decision to be pioneers in Spain in including advanced Nutri-Score nutrition labelling on our own-brand products. This decision was endorsed through a process in which thousands of our Client Partners participated.

Likewise, we continue to advance in the promotion of responsible, environmentally friendly and supportive consumption. This is visible in our collaboration with the Food Bank and social organizations in our setting, to whom we donated more than 6,500 tons of food in 2018 to help the most disadvantaged groups. Our commitment in the field of sustainable logistics to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 20% over the next 5 years was certified by the European platform Lean & Green. As regards the environment, we have incorporated a new paper bag as an alternative to plastic bags as part of our commitment to making it easier for consumers to adopt more sustainable consumption patterns. We are a project aimed at consumers and society with values and competitiveness based on inclusive and sustainable development.

That is why we are continuously adapting to face current and future challenges. We believe our original company mission is still valid: humanize labour relations, defend consumers, stay committed to the environment, collaborate in social transformation. Making a differential contribution to our community is our calling and many of us at EROSKI work very hard to make this contribution to society, this different way of doing business a reality.

Leire Mugerza
Chair of the Governing Council