At the Environmental & Sustainability Summit 2025, Corina Dospinoiu, Sustainability Director at Auchan Romania, highlighted the company’s 2030 Climate Plan and the urgent need to address gaps in supplier practices, consumer behaviour, and food waste.
“We have a 2030 Climate Plan and a specific programme for suppliers, as we aim to ensure a sustainable supply chain. We run surveys among our partners in Romania and abroad regularly since last year and we try to understand their level of climate maturity, on three levels: low, medium, and high maturity. Unfortunately, we’ve just finalised the third round of surveys and found that 85% of suppliers in Romania do not measure their emissions. It’s a reason for alarm, and we will take measures to ensure that the supply chain becomes more sustainable.”
She stressed that engaging consumers is just as important as working with suppliers:
“It’s important to work with consumers as well, through selective waste collection, clothing recycling or other campaigns. We try to increase consumers’ commitment and engagement and also to reward them, because the thinking is still based on ‘what’s in it for me’ and this is the framework in which we work to create lasting responsible behaviour.”
Dospinoiu also pointed to innovation and AI as tools with major potential to improve sustainability outcomes.
“We are very focused on automation, process efficiency and simplification through technology. Right now, we are working intensively on a project targeting food waste, because it is a key indicator both for sustainability and for economics — for us and for consumers.”
She explained that Auchan recently piloted an AI-based forecasting system for fruit and vegetable orders in five stores:
“In the second half of the year we implemented a new AI-based forecasting solution for fruit and vegetable orders in five of our stores. Managing demand in this category is extremely complex, because it means balancing consumer needs with the entire supply chain. With AI we can simplify this process for colleagues, and for consumers it translates into much higher freshness and better adaptation of volumes, so that we avoid waste.”
