Management Commitment
– SHIONOGI’s commitment to realizing a sustainable society
“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 keenly aware of the need to minimize 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. The SHIONOGI Group (“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 the reduction of marine plastic pollution.
SHIONOGI has also continued to make group-wide efforts to address various environmental issues, such as controlling the release of antimicrobials into the environment from manufacturing facilities for antimicrobials handled by SHIONOGI, including suppliers, and implementing measures to achieve our greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. In recognition of these efforts, in FY2023, we received the highest rating of A from CDP*1 in both the fields of “Climate Change” and “Water Security” for the second consecutive year. We are extremely honored that the group’s initiatives have been so highly evaluated.
Moreover, in FY2023, we were able to welcome Qpex Biopharma, Inc., a U.S. company with strengths in the field of infectious diseases, into SHIONOGI. As our business grows, our overseas manufacturing and research sites will become more important than ever before. We therefore need to strengthen our environmental initiatives globally. In addition, when introducing new technologies to reduce our environmental impact, which increases with the expansion of business activities, we need to appropriately determine the timing and effectiveness of such initiatives and manage them across the entire group. In FY2023, to address some of these issues, we reviewed our environmental strategy and added “environmental management and governance” to our Environmental Materiality. We believe that this has strengthened the foundation for SHIONOGI to tackle various environmental issues with a stronger sense of unity.
SHIONOGI will work as a group to reduce its environmental impact, which tends to increase with the expansion of business activities. Moreover, by appropriately disclosing the details of our efforts, we will strengthen engagement with our stakeholders. Thus, we will fulfill our social responsibilities in order to become a company that will be needed in the future.
– SHIONOGI’s EHS activities toward realizing a sustainable society
SHIONOGI has identified “Protect the environment” as one of its material issues (materiality) to reduce negative impacts on customers and society. 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 as our Environmental Materiality the four items of “AMR,”*2 “climate change,” “resource conservation and circulation,” and “water,” which should be given higher priority among environmental issues, and we have promoted activities to resolve these issues.
In FY2023, we reviewed our Environmental Materiality and added a new item, “environmental management and governance,” clearly demonstrating SHIONOGI’s intention to further strengthen its environmental activities. This is because in the situation where our operating sites are increasing globally with the growth of our business, we believe that it is necessary to further strengthen our environmental management and governance structure and to strategically respond across the group to global environmental issues, such as climate change, environmental pollution, and the depletion of natural capital.
With the review of our Environmental Materiality, we have also revised the SHIONOGI Group EHS*3 Action Targets, which have been set in five-year increments, into medium- and long-term plans up to 2035/2050, and have set specific numerical targets for each plan, focusing on each item of Environmental Materiality. Until now, we have worked to improve each item identified as Environmental Materiality by enhancing initiatives at the operating site level in five-year increments. However, in order for SHIONOGI to contribute to the achievement of international environmental targets such as the Paris Agreement targets, we have determined that it is necessary to strengthen management involvement and to set and implement longer-term targets in conjunction with our future business and investment plans. That’s why we have revised our EHS Action Targets. By setting targets to be achieved by 2035, we will be able to make investment decisions and implement measures more strategically, working backwards from our Vision of what we want to be. Moreover, for items of water and waste materials, performance figures had previously increased in line with the expansion of our manufacturing activities, making it difficult to see the efforts made on the ground. However, we have reviewed the indicators and targets we set for these items to make it possible to visualize the contribution made to reducing the environmental impact at each operating site. For specific targets for each item and efforts to achieve them, please see the detailed explanation for each item in the Environment section.
We will continue to promote environmental initiatives in all of SHIONOGI’s activities, including the supply chain, to reduce the negative impacts of our business and contribute to the realization of a sustainable society. At the same time, we will work to enhance information disclosure in order to strengthen engagement with stakeholders and ensure that we remain relevant in the future. We appreciate your continued support.
*2 AMR: Antimicrobial Resistance
*3 EHS: Environment, Health and Safety