Atlantic Grupa Offsets Industry Challenges Thanks to a Transformation 15 Years in the Making

While notions of adaptability and agility have become even more pressurised in recent years, Atlantic Grupa had a slight head start on many competitors having already laid out its digitisation roadmap long before. Recent cost and materials challenges have inevitably made life more difficult, but the company’s procurement organisation - headed by Danijel Banek, Executive Director of Central Procurement - remains resilient thanks to strong supplier relationships and a dynamic culture.

Hi Danijel. I understand you’ve been with Atlantic Grupa for 15 years now – how would you assess the journey so far?

Atlantic Grupa was founded in the early 1990s as a distribution company with only six employees, before expanding at the beginning of the 2000s through acquisitions of food and beverage production companies. I joined at the beginning of 2008 as, by the end of the same decade, it had already reached a critical size to require a Central Procurement department within the company. From a blank canvas, I was tasked with organising the newly internalised Central Procurement team. A decade-and-a-half later, I’m still in that role as Executive Director of Central Procurement, now leading a mature and experienced procurement organisation that has grown and developed together with the growth and development of the company.

Of course, your experience in procurement dates even further back than these 15