You are Marieke van Rooij, head of organisational development at Daalhof Food Group in Nijmegen. This morning the works council refused to endorse a fourth sustainability programme, and the chief executive handed you the restart: ninety days, EUR 6.0 million and three company-wide events. Your first call is what, inside Daalhof, that restart will be built on.
The situation
Daalhof began in 1958 as a farmers' cooperative and today sells dairy and plant-based foods: EUR 1.3 billion of revenue, 6,200 employees, four plants and roughly 1,900 supplying dairy farms. Its public 2030 commitments are behind on all three interim milestones: emissions down 9% against an 18% target, food waste down 12% against 25%, and plant-based lines at 11% of the portfolio against 20%. Two consequences already carry a price: EUR 28 million of loan-margin ratchets tied to the emissions path, and the largest retailer's "net-zero supplier" listing, worth EUR 95 million of revenue a year.
There have been three programmes in five years, and each opened the same way: an outside deck, a new dashboard and a full catalogue of what the company was doing wrong. Two were abandoned; the third is stalling. The works-council chair, Youssef Belkacem, has been clear: the council voted for the targets and stands by them, but it will not again be gathered in a canteen and shown slides. Change engagement stands at 41% favourable and has fallen three quarters running; the chief executive, Bram Oosterhuis, has named 60% as the credible level. Adoption of new practices sits at 25 out of 100. You sat on the team that designed the second programme and wrote its engagement plan.
Two places do not fit the picture. The Veghel plant has cut its own food waste by 30% in two years, without a programme, using a scheme its shift leaders designed. And about forty supplying farms have been running regenerative-grazing trials with the agronomy team since 2024, comparing results among themselves. Neither has been written up. The targets belong to the chief sustainability officer, Ingrid Sleutjes, whose roadmap external auditors have reviewed twice. On 10 September you present to Oosterhuis and Belkacem together; if they are not persuaded, the board will hand the whole 2030 programme to an outside firm.