Dive Brief:
- Heineken appointed Romain Apert as chief digital and technology officer and member of the executive team, the company said in a Thursday statement. Apert will succeed current Chief Digital and Technology Officer Ronald den Elzen, who is leaving the organization after 31 years, effective May 15.
- A seasoned technology executive, Apert spent more than 25 years at Mars Inc., the last 14 as a global CIO across various business units including, most recently, Mars Petcare. In that role, he led a digital transformation strategy to modernize its ERP, data foundation and upskilling efforts, according to the press release.
- Apert will join Heineken as it ramps up efforts to execute on EverGreen 2030, which it launched in October as the second phase of a larger technology-forward initiative focused on growing the business. In a post on LinkedIn, Apert highlighted his plan to advance EverGreen 2030 by focusing on “further deploying the company's digital backbone and scaling the immense value of data and AI.”
Dive Insight:
Heineken is in the throes of a wide-scale transformation amid sluggish beer sales, which have plagued the company since the COVID-19 pandemic as energy and supply prices have increased and consumer tastes have shifted to no- and low-alcohol options.
Since October, the Dutch brewer has undergone a restructuring at its corporate office in Amsterdam that resulted in the loss of 400 jobs, announced CEO Dolf van den Brink’s decision to step down at the end of May, and shared its plans to lay off up to 6,000 employees or about 7% of its workforce, over the next two years.
Heineken has consistently tied these changes to EverGreen 2030 and the company’s efforts to grow while future-proofing its business. The EverGreen strategy was initially launched as a five-year growth plan by Van den Brink in 2020, then called EverGreen 2025, to counteract falling sales.
Since the beginning, the initiative focused on establishing a “digital backbone,” a multiyear digital transformation effort to centralize and modernize its technology stack including its ERP system while standardizing data and processes. The company, which operates more than 300 brands across 80 countries, leaned on its partnership with IBM to stand up a modular IT environment, which included support for migrating to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure.
The digital backbone is “flanked by over 40 digital business platforms — including commerce, supply chain, finance and more — along with digital products,” the company stated in its 2025 annual report. “With end-to-end processes, data harmonisation and a networked organisation, DBB is how we scale standardised capabilities across operating companies.”
Setting up the digital backbone could help propel capabilities such as Hoppy. Introduced last year, the generative AI chatbot is built on SAP Business Technology Platform, a cloud-based application development platform, and utilizes SAP Business AI to link disparate data sources. Executives and employees can access Hoppy through Microsoft Teams and ask questions against corporate KPIs using natural language.
Heineken began rolling out its digital backbone in 2024 and plans to scale the rollout as part of EverGreen 2030.
“We were behind on digitizing the business, including the boring ERP part of it, and we're really advancing at pace, making considerable investments not just in money but also in organizational resources to make sure that our digital backbone is future-proofed,” Van den Brink said as he reflected on his CEO tenure during a Q4 2025 earnings call earlier this month.
