The Dutch pension fund of the Dutch-Belgian retail giant has set an impact mandate of €300m. Achmea IM will provide strategic advice, as well as select and monitor funds aligned with the pension fund’s impact themes of climate and nutrition.
The Ahold Delhaize Pensioen, the pension fund for the close to 120,000 Dutch employees of Dutch-Belgian retail multinational Ahold Delhaize, is making a move into impact investing by appointing Achmea Investment Management to provide strategic advice on integrating impact objectives into the fund’s €5.5bn investment portfolio.
Ahold Delhaize, one of the world’s biggest supermarkets chains, owns supermarket well-known supermarket brands including Food Lion in the US and Albert Heijn in the Netherlands.
In addition to providing strategic advice, Achmea IM will select and monitor investment funds that are aligned with the pension fund’s impact themes of climate and nutrition. The fund’s impact mandate is set at €300m, and Achmea IM will collaborate with impact investing consultancy Phenix Capital Group to execute it.
“We see this as the next step to make more impact in the world,” Eric Huizing, executive board member and chairman of the investment committee at Ahold Delhaize Pensioen, told Impact Investor.
The fund will be looking to make “concrete investments in companies and projects that make positive solutions in the field of climate and food” Huizing said.
“The most important thing we have focused on so far in terms of making an impact with our investments is engagement,” said Huizing. “We engage with companies to further improve their sustainability performance on the themes of climate and food.”
Last year, the pension fund further expanded its engagement focus to include a total of eight themes. “We see that many of these engagements have a positive effect on companies to raise awareness and take action. We also vote positively on shareholder proposals with a positive effect on climate and food,” Huizing said.
Five percent of the fund’s investment portfolio will be gradually invested in impact funds, according to Huizing. He said the risks associated with impact investing will be “mitigated” by diversifying the impact portfolio over private equity, private debt, infrastructure and forestry/farmland, as well as diversifying it across vintage years, regions and the sub-themes of climate and nutrition.
“Overall, we do expect that the return-risk profile of our total investment portfolio will be the same,” Huizing said.
Food and nutrition
Huizing explained the reasons behind the decision to focus on climate and nutrition as their key impact themes.
“The themes climate and food are the outcomes of the discussions with our participants and the employer,” said Huizing. “As a pension fund, we believe that sustainable investing leads to a healthy return in a liveable and healthy world, [and] as far as we are concerned, these things go hand in hand. A good pension has much less value if the world in which that pension is enjoyed is not liveable.”
Huizing also referred to Ahold Delhaize’s vision of “healthy food in a healthy living environment”.
“We are convinced that the right to sufficient and healthy food in a healthy living environment must be protected as much as possible. As an investor, we can influence a sustainable agriculture and food sector that produces or can produce food in a responsible manner,” he said.
