Ajinomoto Group

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence that its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Furthermore, it discloses the impacts of these engagement activities on its sustainability strategy. The company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, including biodiversity, nutrition and social issues.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has announced its goal to decrease its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030, from a 2018 baseline year. It regularly reports on the progress towards these targets. Additionally, the company works on reducing its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and reports on progress. The company shows leadership by aligning all its GHG emissions reduction targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Food loss and waste
The company is committed to a long-term vision to halve food loss and waste generated throughout the entire product lifecycle by 2050 as compared to 2018. It reports progress against the target and demonstrates how it collaborates with value chain partners to prevent FLW from being generated. Additionally, between 2021 and 2022, there was a quantitative decrease in the amount of FLW generated by the company.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company discloses quantitative and qualitative data with regards to plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging. For example, it describes how it has reduced packaging thickness and is developing technology to transition from plastic to mono-material packaging.

Water withdrawal
The company actively works towards reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. It has set a target to reduce the amount of used water per production by 80% compared to the fiscal year 2005 by 2030, and regularly reports on its progress. Additionally, the company emphasizes that it withdraws less than 1% of water from water-stressed areas within their own operations.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has set a goal to reach 400 million people annually by 2030 with products that promote salt reduction and optimize protein intake. In addition, the company aims to enhance the nutritional value of 60% of its products by 2030 using the Ajinomoto Group Nutrient Profiling System to guide its product reformulation.

Workforce nutrition
The company implements nutrition-focused health checks and nutrition education programmes for its employees. Furthermore, it provides healthy lunch menu in its headquarters cafeteria as part of its workforce nutrition efforts.

Forced labour
The company prohibits suppliers from using recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job. Also, it prohibits them from retaining workers’ personal documents or restricting workers’ freedom of movement.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company recognizes local sugarcane harvesting workers as vulnerable groups in relation to health and safety and identifies their
health and safety risks.

Act ethically
The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. The company identifies bribery and corruption risks by means of periodically audits regarding the compliance and execution of group shared policy on bribery prevention and the provisions related to this policy. Additionally, it publicly commits to protect personal data and has a global tax strategy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers and expects its business relationships to do so.

Moreover, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment. While the company currently has 30% women on the board, it also aims to increase the representation of female by 30% in directors and by 30% in line managers by fiscal 2030. Additionally, it discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and the ILO core labour rights. Additionally, it expects its suppliers to respect the ILO core labour rights.

The company describes the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations, including its supply chain. It also describes its process for assessing its human rights risks and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues and provides a case study describing how it has acted on a salient human rights risk issue. Moreover, the company discloses categories of stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities, and provides a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While the company discloses a remuneration policy related to nature-related objectives, it has an opportunity to link this policy to improvement in social issues.

Lobbying and advocacy
While the company discloses that it is member of Workforce Nutrition Alliance, it has an opportunity disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member for all jurisdictions in which it operates. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any potential misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses its target to reduce its scope 3 emissions, however the target does not apply to overall scope 3 emissions as it targets to reduce by 24% per volume unit by FY2030 relative to F2018 levels. It has an opportunity to set a target that encompasses all its scope 3 emissions and report progress against it.

Animal welfare
The company has an opportunity to disclose animal welfare targets that are applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Water withdrawal
The company discloses the proportion of suppliers it requests to report on their water use, risks and/or management information. Also, it discloses evidence of general engagement with its suppliers to reduce their water consumption, however, no evidence found that the company provides evidence of engaging with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has the chance to change its focus from philanthropic to commercial activities in order to enhance the availability of nutritious foods for vulnerable groups. Additionally, the company can implement commercial activities to make nutritious foods more affordable, particularly for vulnerable groups. Furthermore, the company can set a target to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups, through its commercial activities.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase the percentage of nutritious products in accordance with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
While the company discloses that it uses the Ajinomoto Group Nutrient Profiling System for Products (ANPS-P), which is based on the scoring method of the Health Star Rating System, it has an opportunity to adopt front-of-pack labels or any other consumer- facing nutrition labels that support consumers with making healthier food choices. Additionally, the company can provide information on the percentage of products that have implemented their front-of-pack labelling schemes.

Food safety
While the company discloses that it has acquired FSSC 22000 certification, it has an opportunity to extend the certifications to 100% of its own operations. Additionally, the company can disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to provide evidence of marketing activities to promote heathier and more nutritious food options (in accordance with a government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines). Additionally, the company can disclose a responsible marketing policy specifically tailored to children that is aligned with international codes and guidelines and applicable across all media channels.

Workforce nutrition
While the company discloses the number of employees reached through its e-learning nutrition program, it has the opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence on its healthy food offering program. The company could also disclose the length covered by its parental leave policy as well as any other breastfeeding supports such as dedicated breastfeeding rooms or flexible working hours for breastfeeding mothers. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to expand its nutrition initiatives to supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has set up initiatives to improve the productivity of the farms but it has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves farmers’ income resilience through its procurement practices and supply chain relationships. Also, it could demonstrate how it identifies living income benchmarks and assesses living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
For its operations, the company has an opportunity to disclose a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Furthermore, it could indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company could provide evidence of support activities that improve the health and safety of vulnerable groups.

Act ethically
While the company has a mechanism for employees to raise concerns, it is unclear if this mechanism is to raise bribery and corruption concerns, is accessible to all stakeholders and if complainants have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous. Additionally, while the company outlines its approach to political engagement in a policy, it has an opportunity to outline its lobbying approach in a policy.

Moreover, the company states that it allows political contributions only after obtaining approval. However, it could disclose whether these are made only by exception, and the criteria for making them. Moreover, it has an opportunity to disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company can consider disclosing how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. While the company states that it pays adequate wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. Additionally, it could disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Moreover, it could also disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company could disclose a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.