We aim to enable all our employees to become shareholders in the company. Preserving our Sligro culture and identity and continuing to motivate employees and ensure they feel a sense of loyalty and, most importantly, commitment to our group will also be a critical success factor in the future. Traditionally, our corporate culture has attached great importance to commitment as our origins are those of a family business, with a strong sense of us all working together. And being a shareholder is an important part of this.

Owning shares is not, however, the only aspect involved. We at Sligro Food Group are keen to promote sustainable, long-term ownership of our shares and to relate any growth in such ownership to performance. That performance may be joint, as in the contribution that all employees make to the profitability of our business, or individual, as in each individual employee’s contribution to low illness-related absenteeism. In both cases, share ownership is the result of performance. In 2008, employees received shares with a total value of €2.8 million under the profit-sharing scheme.