Supporting our partners

Our teams work with our retail partners to co-create our brands. They drive innovation and draw on our business experience to ensure individual retailers have precisely the support they need to satisfy consumer demand in their local market.

Everything we do as a business is about supporting the retailer who is working at the heart of communities delivering value and service to local people.

Everything we do - from induction to executive development programmes - is focused on making the retailer successful in those communities. Here are just a few of the individuals dedicated to making our retail partners more competitive and more successful.

Edel Russell, Innovation Team

Our Innovation team is responsible for coming up with new ways to delight and bring value to retailers and consumers - most recently SuperValu’s new loyalty programme and entry into the online grocery market.

Real Rewards is an innovative loyalty solution that allows the retailers to offer the ever-popular Getaway breaks and a series of community promotions that are tailored to the local customer.

By working closely with retail partners, and staying close to consumers, the Innovation team are building on what SuperValu is known and trusted for – great quality fresh food, a commitment to building vibrant local communities, and a drive for new ideas that engage consumers and build loyalty.

Ingrid de Doncker, Commercial Team

Our commercial department helps define and develop common trading agendas across all our businesses. A key objective is to leverage the scale of our business to benefit our retail partners and deliver the best possible value and quality to the consumers they serve.

Ingrid de Doncker manages the eAuction process - an extremely effective negotiating project management tool for Trade and Non-trade, comparing best deals when “all things are equal”.

Ingrid is responsible for managing the full process from start to award, comparing all qualitative and quantitive criteria that are so important to our business and those of our retail partners.

Gary Bostock, Property and Acquisitions

Gary Bostock and team are responsible for new site and business acquisitions, the divestment of corporate stores to independent retailers in Britain and all other property management issues.

With specialist consultants, Gary's team is hard at work for our retail partners.

Challenging all costs and staying one step ahead of the competition are daily challenges for a team committed to achieving minimum expenditure for the business and retailers.

John Curran, Commercial Team

As our Group Environmental Executive, John Curran is focused on the development of strategies which maintain and develop excellence in sustainability across our extensive retail, wholesale and distribution operations.

For us sustainability means living up to our core responsibilities in good times and hard times alike. We are committed to looking after our people, our partners and their customers and to minimising the impact of our business on the environment.

This is about making a positive contribution to people’s lives, to their communities and to society as a whole.

Luke Hanlon, Logistics Team

Luke Hanlon is Logistics Controller for Musgrave in Ireland. His role involves co-ordinating the operational activities across the business to ensure our retail partners are best served.

The logistics department is committed to ensuring that the supply chain - from supplier, through facilities and into stores - is accurate, timely and cost effective. Musgrave operate five depots across the ROI, three of which supply ambient products and two supply chilled and frozen lines. The delivery fleet carries out more than 5000 deliveries per week to SuperValu and Centra stores.

Key benefits delivered by the team include sharing inter-depot best practice, KPI compliance, team development and driving strategic projects.

Martin Kelleher, Consumer Insight

Consumer Insight is a new centre of excellence which is helping our business stay closer to consumers and drive brand strategy and business decisions.

Insights are created by mining deep beneath the facts to uncover and apply consumer motivations to deliver winning strategies and drive growth and consumer loyalty.

The role of Martin's team is to turn research and analysis into meaning, foresight and action plans within our business

Senior management team sponsorship of consumer insight ensures that the initiative is embedded into both the business processes and the existing forums; that it is at the heart of activity going forward.

Graham Cooper, IT Team

Graham Cooper and his team are responsible for in-store systems within Musgrave, most recently the Londis Base system. This system is designed to provide the essential functions of an EPoS system at an affordable price.

Base is fully integrated with Londis head office, with retailers receiving product file downloads on a weekly basis.

This ensures that retailers have the latest cost and retail prices on their system, allowing stores to complete orders and run promotions at the touch of a button.

Several initiatives, including Musgrave Broadband and the Torex and Indigo Systems in Londis and Budgens, are also being implemented to further support the retailer.

Dan Curtin, Commercial Team

Our commercial department is tasked with leading the common trading agendas across our businesses by planning and promoting commonality and knowledge sharing.

The team's mission is implementation of the common strategy to drive lower cost of goods across all businesses, to support the delivery of a different and better range and to drive the development of a high performance commercial function.

The team also provide support and facilitates projects within divisions and also acts as the commercial contact point for outside bodies such as the Competition Authority and other commercial groups.

Diarmuid Moloney, Trading Team

Our trading team is committed to leveraging the scale of the business to deliver best value in store while maintaining the business values and credentials at the heart of the Musgrave approach.

Negotiating effectively with suppliers is critical in delivering footfall-driving promotions on everyday family items. Significant progress has been made to ensure that top suppliers understand the scale of the wider business and deliver the lines our retailers need at the right prices to compete with the multiples.

In the same way, own brand ranges are benchmarked against industry best practice to deliver real choice to consumers.

Eamonn L'Estrange, IT Team

Musgrave Simplifies Retail (MSR) - one of Ireland's largest ever IT programmes - comprises a series of technical initiatives which deliver an even better service to our retail partners. 

By consolidating a number of key technologies into a centralised resource, MSR delivers a best-in-class back office solution to ramp up the efficiency of store operations.

The new system means outstandingly accurate information and reporting that enables timely and informed decision making to maximise ordering efficiencies.

MSR is a long term project involving major investment across a number teams, and in a range of technologies, reflecting our commitment to support retailers on the ground.

Nick Tryfonos - Development Team

Our aim is to use collective buying to support our retailer partners, delivering cost savings and performance efficiency by harnessing the combined scale of the business.

For example, we have been able to go to manufacturers with a bigger and better proposition, enabling them to come back to us with an offer that is far more favourable to our retailers. Our biggest participation initiative to date was a refrigerated cabinet event that has resulted in the procurement of a best in class solution in terms of quality and energy efficiency.

Similarly with lighting we have achieved savings of 35% for retailers across the business which we believe is unrivalled in the sector.

Kenton Burchell

We are supporting our Londis retail partners by investing to deliver competitive pricing on milk, bread and sugar that has already saved retailers £1 million.

This is part of a business wide initiative through which we are working closely with our supplier partners to identify opportunities for retailers to improve their margins.

For example, in Britain we have introduced milk into our retailer service centres (RSCs), enabling retailers who buy their milk through the RSCs to significantly improve their margins

We have also worked closely with its supplier partners to cut the price of 2 litre standard fresh milk delivered direct to store through the central billing facility and is committed to give retailers the opportunity to improve their margins on bread during the next few months.

Londis retailers can also benefit from lower prices on sugar, through the RSCs.