Maruha Nichiro

Stakeholder engagement
Maruha Nichiro discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement and the communication channels it employs. This transparent approach showcases its commitment to addressing a wide range of sustainability concerns and involving stakeholders through various means.

Sustainable development strategy
The company shares its process for identifying and prioritizing its key sustainability impacts and provides insight into the outcomes of this process, as they relate to its sustainability strategy.

Animal welfare
The company discloses evidence of processes of animal welfare third-party certifications or third-party audits.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment, has policies or partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. Also, the company discloses quantitative data with regards to plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

Sustainable fishing and aquaculture
The company discloses its support for effective fishery management practices and adoption of the MSC certification standard. Additionally, it promotes the handling of MSC/ASC-certified seafood products and has recently acquired an ASC certificate for responsibly sourcing farmed marine products.

No leading practices were identified in the nutrition area.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data, and discloses a privacy statement on how it uses personal data.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available statement of policy that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers, and discloses how it monitors supplier compliance. Additionally, The company discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. It discloses a target to maintain a 50% female recruitment ratio, increase percentage of female employees to at least 35%, have at least 30% women on the board, and raise female management job ratio to at least 15% in by 2030.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights, and describes the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain. Moreover, the company indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
While the company discloses some trade associations, it has an opportunity to disclose a full list of trade associations of which it is a member for all jurisdictions where it operates. Furthermore, the company can provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, the company can report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to explain how it has responded to key issues raised by each stakeholder group and disclose specific outcomes implemented to respond to key issues for each stakeholder group, beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including social inclusion and climate, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Moreover, it could report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has disclosed its target of reducing CO₂ emissions by 30% from FY2017 levels by FY2030 for its domestic group consolidated companies. However, there is no evidence that the company has set targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions across all its operations. To address this, the company could report on its progress towards these scope 1 and 2 targets. It also has the opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory and effectively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the company can work on reducing its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and disclosing a time-bound target for this. It is also important for the company to report its progress towards these scope 3 targets and align them with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

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

Sustainable fishing and aquaculture
Although the company demonstrates a commitment to sustainable fishing and aquaculture, there is room for improvement by providing measurable evidence of its progress. This can be achieved by disclosing targets for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for its entire portfolio and regularly reporting on the progress made towards these targets.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides examples of reformulated products. However, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of positive nutrients in its entire portfolio. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to establish nutrition criteria and to set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to food safety and demonstrate that its operations and supply chain adhere to food safety standards.

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. For its suppliers, it has in place expectations on the prohibition of child labour and on the use of an age verification system. However, it could translate the latter into policy requirements.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Act ethically
The company aligns with specific regulations on bribery and corruption, but it has an opportunity to disclose a general commitment on prohibiting such practices, and describe the process for identifying potential risks and impact related to bribery and corruption. Relatedly, while it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships, it could specify the consequences of breaching these clauses. Additionally, while the company has a mechanism for employees to raise bribery and corruption concerns, a mechanism where all stakeholders can raise complainants either by identifying themselves or remaining anonymous could be disclosed.

Moreover, it has an opportunity to have a policy setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach and specifying that it does not make political contributions. The company could further disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses that it is working to promote health and safety of workers, but it could formalise this commitment in a public policy document. Additionally, it has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or declare that it has achieved this goal. It also has an opportunity to disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. Relatedly, while it has set expectations on the wage paid by its suppliers, it has an opportunity to add a requirement for them to pay a living wage, and disclose how it supports the payment.

Moreover, the company has an opportunity to disclose a public commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It could increase transparency by disclosing information on the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights both in its operations and supply chain, but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work. It could further place this expectation from its business relationships in a formal policy document. Additionally, it has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts, and how it identifies what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. Moreover, while the company states that it continues to develop and implement a process of human rights due diligence, it could disclose a global system to act on all its salient human rights issues in all its activities.