Maruha Nichiro

Sustainability strategy
Maruha Nichiro has a sustainability strategy covering its most significant impacts and sustainability topics in relation to both its own operations and its value chain, including environmental, social and traceability issues. Moreover, 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.

Stakeholder engagement
Maruha Nichiro discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Maruha Nichiro has a general commitment to sustainable seafood and sources some of seafood products from Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certified operations.

No leading practices were identified in the traceability area.

No leading practices were identified in the social responsibility area.

Respect human rights
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Provide and promote decent work
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Act ethically
Maruha Nichiro discloses a public commitment to protect personal data and discloses a privacy statement on how it uses personal data.

Sustainability strategy
While Maruha Nichiro has a sustainability strategy covering its most significant impacts and sustainability topics in relation to both its own operations and its value chain it only has sustainability objectives for its some of its social impacts. Therefore, 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.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Stakeholder engagement
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Lobbying and advocacy
While Maruha Nichiro 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.

Sustainable fisheries 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.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Maruha Nichiro discloses that 59% of the wild seafood products the company sources are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or other certification schemes. However, the company has an opportunity to demonstrate how it address the ecosystem impacts of the fisheries it sources from that are not certified, for example through Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs).

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Maruha Nichiro does not disclose information about its aquaculture operations and supply chain. The company has an opportunity to improve its transparency and sustainability performance by disclosing how it addresses key issues in aquaculture, such as antibiotic use, sustainability of aquaculture feed ingredients and animal welfare.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Through its SeaBOS membership, Maruha Nichiro endorses the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) standard. However, the company does not disclose information about how it traces and verifies the origins of seafood products. The company has an opportunity to set and disclose progress on a time-bound target to implement the GDST standard. Maruha Nichiro can also improve its sustainability performance by disclosing details about its traceability system including key data elements that are collected and the mechanisms used to verify the information along the supply chain.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
Maruha Nichiro sources from Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries which helps mitigate IUU risks in those fisheries and its strategy to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing risks is to source more certified seafood products. However, the company has an opportunity to inform its strategy by conducting an assessment for IUU risks across its operations and supply and disclose how it addresses any identified risks.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Although Maruha Nichiro discloses the list of species sourced, it does not publicly share information about the geographic location where the seafood products were caught or produced. The company can improve its performance by disclosing an overview of its seafood sourcing and operations, including information about species, geographic location, and management status.

Forced Labour
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
Maruha Nichiro has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve fisher and farmers’ income resilience.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
Maruha Nichiro does not publicly disclose a policy or code of conduct to ensure decent working and living conditions on board fishing vessels in its operations and supply chains. Disclosure of this information would be a first step to guarantee that the company is taking steps to address these issues. The company thus has an opportunity to improve its performance by developing and disclosing a policy or code of conduct, monitoring working and living conditions on its vessels, disclosing monitoring results, and showing how risks are mitigated and improvements are implemented.

Respect human rights
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Provide and promote decent work
Maruha Nichiro 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.

Act ethically
Maruha Nichiro 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.