With REWE digital and REWE Systems, two organisations have established themselves that always have the perfect shopping experience of the future in mind. REWE digital was founded to drive online retail forward. REWE Systems is dedicated to brick-and-mortar retail. Now these capabilities are being bundled and driven forward as a joint company under the uniform "REWE digital" brand.

"We can see that customers' shopping behaviour has changed in recent years and that there are significant effects in retail. At the same time, we are well positioned and have built up enormous potential in terms of both technology and innovation. With the new unit, we are taking the next step and raising the digital and technology area to a new level through even closer cooperation and even better utilisation of synergies," says Christoph Eltze.

"Our common goal is to further develop the area of retail IT within the company. This means expanding our success not only with new technologies and innovations, but also in the solutions for our day-to-day business, for employees in the stores and in logistics, as well as in our collaboration with technology partners and start-ups. All our employees and IT specialists, in whom we actively invest, whose expertise we promote and need and to whom we can also offer new opportunities for further development, are at the centre of this. We are thus emphasising our role as a technological pioneer in the food retail sector in the long term," adds Thomas Friedl, Member of the Managing Directors of REWE digital.

For the employees of the new REWE digital unit, close cooperation has already been a reality for months: regardless of the locations in Cologne, Berlin, Ilmenau, Kiel, Sofia, Varna, Graz, Málaga or the regional locations in Germany, numerous and diverse workstreams are active for collaboration. In addition, many technology teams have already intensified and optimised their collaboration where possible and appropriate.

As part of the merger under company law, REWE digital is being given a new corporate identity that represents the two previous units and the people who make them up. The new image is not only concerned with new branding, but also with new jointly developed working methods, cultural values and goals, which will be further elaborated in the coming months.