Basic Approach
In addition to continually generating profit in their businesses, companies face the ever increasing task of helping to solve a range of social issues, as seen in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, which call for businesses to engage in sustainable initiatives. To respond to such changes in social conditions, the Kuraray Group updated its Sustainability Concept and reviewed its material issues (materiality).
The Group’s sustainability management is carried out under the lead of the top management.
Based on its mission stated in the Corporate Statements “For people and the planet—to achieve what no one else can,” we aim to achieve long-term growth and constant creation of new value by working to solve material issues, with the five items of “governance” and “lead of top management” in addition to “compliance,” “safety,” and “risk management” serving as a base.
The Kuraray Group’s corporate activities are established by relationships with many stakeholders including customers and consumers, shareholders and investors, suppliers and partners, employees, local communities, and central and local governments. The Group will further deepen stakeholder engagement to enhance our corporate activities.
Sustainability Concept
Value Creation Process
Our corporate activities create a value chain in which we invest funds from shareholders and investors into the business, consisting of “financial value” obtained through offering various number-one products and services with higher added value and “non-financial capital” such as “intellectual capital” to provide a broad spectrum of core technologies ranging from materials technologies to those for processing, “human capital” to achieve human resource diversity and inclusion, “manufacturing capital” to create a global production system, and “social and relationship capital” based on the trust of stakeholders by distributing and reinvesting them. We also strive to accumulate and strengthen the returning value.
Sustainability Promotion Structure
The sustainability promotion system of the Kuraray Group began in 2003 with the establishment of the CSR Committee by integrating the Social Environment Committee and the Corporate Ethics Committee. Thereafter, the Committee’s functions were divided into the CSR Committee and the Risk Management and Compliance Committee, with both committees responsible for promoting sustainability activities throughout the Group.
Six working teams (environmental preservation, measures against global warming, quality management and product safety, philanthropy, labor environment, and information management) are organized under the CSR Committee. These working teams deliberate company-wide policies and targets and propose them to the management, while collaborating with various organizations in the Kuraray Group in addressing selected themes.
Kuraray monitors risks regularly as the Group, led by the Risk Management and Compliance Committee, and extracts material risks that could have a significant impact on business management. Such risks are proposed to the President, who then specifies critical management risks, and priority countermeasures are carried out after deliberations by the Board of Directors. The Committee is working to ensure priority countermeasures against business management risk, as well as compliance with laws and regulations and corporate ethics, and realizes fair business practices.
