Management Commitment
– SHIONOGI’s commitment to realizing a sustainable society
Considering the opening sentence of the SHIONOGI Group Heritage (The Company Policy of SHIONOGI) of “SHIONOGI strives constantly to supply the best possible medicine (healthcare solutions) to protect the health and wellbeing of the patients we serve” to be the purpose of the group, SHIONOGI works to resolve health and medical problems for patients, their families, everyone involved in medical care, and society as a whole. As the SHINOGI Group Vision for what we want to be in 2030 (2030 Vision), we have set the goal of “building innovation platforms to shape the future of healthcare.” We formulated the medium-term business plan STS2030 in June 2020 as a concrete strategy for realizing this goal, and have promoted company-wide efforts to achieve the vision. Three years have passed since the formulation of STS2030, and concrete results have been produced, such as the provision of new therapeutic drugs for COVID-19, which has been a major social problem, and the submission of manufacturing and marketing approval for a COVID-19 vaccine. Since the path to realizing the 2030 Vision has become clearer, we updated STS2030 and re-formulated it as STS2030 Revision in June of this year. To ensure SHIONOGI’s sustainable growth, we will continue to create new value that resolves social issues surrounding healthcare and to promote initiatives to deliver it to everyone around the world.
“Contributing to a sustainable society” is an important theme that we must fulfill with responsibility as a company, along with “sustainable corporate growth.” Regarding the environment in particular, we are deeply aware of the importance of minimizing the negative impacts (resource depletion, environmental pollution, etc.) caused by the group’s business activities as a corporate group that employs natural capital to operate its business. SHIONOGI has identified “Protect the environment” as one of its material issues (materiality). Based on this, we are sincerely facing various environmental issues and taking responsible measures to address them, including tackling climate change, which is an urgent global issue, reducing the release of chemical substances into the environment during the pharmaceutical manufacturing process, which is a unique issue for pharmaceutical companies, and promoting resource conservation/recycling and biodiversity conservation, including marine plastic pollution reduction.
SHIONOGI has also made group-wide efforts to address environmental issues, such as ongoing initiatives to reduce the release of antimicrobials into the environment from our manufacturing facilities, the implementation of measures to achieve our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and response to information disclosure based on the TCFD*1 recommendations. In recognition of these efforts, in FY2022, we were the first pharmaceutical company to be certified as an Eco-First Company by the Minister of the Environment. In addition, we received the highest rating of A from CDP*2 in both the fields of “Climate Change” and “Water Security.” We are extremely honored that the group’s initiatives have been highly praised by our external stakeholders.
We will continue to strengthen engagement with our stakeholders and fulfill our social responsibilities by addressing climate change and other environmental issues in order to become a company that will be needed in the future.
*1 Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
*2 A non-profit organization whose main activities involve requesting companies and local governments to disclose information on their actions for climate change control, water resources protection, forest conservation, and other environmental issues based on the request of institutional investors and major corporate clients around the world with a strong interest in environmental issues, thereby promoting actions to tackle environmental issues
– SHIONOGI’s EHS*3 activities toward realizing a sustainable society
SHIONOGI has identified “Protect the environment” as one of its material issues (materiality) to be addressed to reduce the negative impacts on customers and society. In the medium-term business plan STS2030 Revision, we also focus on the environment as a response to sustainability issues. Furthermore, through the analysis of SHIONOGI’s business characteristics and changes in the external environment, as well as dialogue with external stakeholders and related parties within the group, we have identified the four material issues of “AMR,”*4 “climate change,” “resource conservation and circulation,” and “water” as our Environmental Materiality, which should be more prioritized among environmental issues, to promote activities to resolve the issues.
In FY2022, we revised SHIONOGI EHS Policy to further clarify the purpose and significance, management’s commitment, promotion structure, and compliance with related laws and regulations regarding SHIONOGI’s EHS activities that deal with the environment and occupational health and safety.
We also established the SHIONOGI Group EHS Code of Conduct, which specifies concrete actions for employees to promote EHS activities. Thus, we have developed the foundation for EHS, including the identification of material issues, the formulation of the EHS policy and code of conduct, and the setting of specific EHS action targets (single-year, medium- to long-term), in addition to the formulation of the SHIONOGI Group Heritage, which is our management philosophy. Furthermore, based on the recommendations of the TCFD, for which we expressed support in FY2021, related organizations of SHIONOGI collaborated to conduct a detailed assessment of the impact of climate change on the group’s business with reference to the TCFD framework and consider strategies and specific countermeasures against it. We also focused on responding to the demands of society by disclosing the results of our assessment. We believe that by taking these responses, we have strengthened the foundation for SHIONOGI to responsibly deal with environmental issues, which are common global issues that transcend generations and cannot be reversed.
Meanwhile, in FY2022, COVID-19-related R&D and manufacturing activities increased more than expected. As a result, we were unable to achieve the target values for several environment-related items set as FY2022[A1] EHS action targets, such as energy and water consumption and waste generation. As the Corporate Officer in charge of EHS, I take seriously the fact that last year’s targets were not achieved. In FY2023, we will once again consider how to reduce environmental impact and efficiently use natural capital. We will continue to implement initiatives such as switching to electricity derived from renewable energy, optimizing manufacturing processes, increasing the efficiency of cleaning methods for manufacturing equipment, and promoting the horizontal recycling of label mounts, which is Shionogi Pharma’s initiative, to further strengthen our activities to minimize our impact on the environment as much as possible. In addition, given that the global trend surrounding environmental issues is extremely rapid and that the business environment surrounding SHIONOGI is changing significantly, we plan to review and update the EHS Action Targets, which were formulated in 2020, to more strategically promote SHIONOGI’s environmental initiatives. In this context, we intend to incorporate biodiversity, which has received increasing attention in recent years, as one of the targets, and consider how to respond to biodiversity as a strategic initiative that contributes to the realization of Nature Positive.
SHIONOGI contributes to the health of people and the maintenance of the global environment through its business activities, thereby achieving both the realization of a sustainable society and the growth of the company. Furthermore, we will continue to take responsible action and enhance our information disclosure to strengthen our engagement with all of our stakeholders. We will also work to continue to improve corporate value so that we can become a company that is needed in the future.
*3 EHS: Environment, Health and Safety
*4 AMR: Antimicrobial Resistance
