Engagement

Stakeholder Engagement

To grow sustainably together with society, the Kirin Group has positioned Creating Shared Value (CSV) as the core of its company management in its Long-Term Management Vision, Kirin Group Vision 2027.
CSV management means the creation of economic value and social value at the same time, with the aim of sustainable growth together with society by realizing both solutions to social issues and the provision of value to customers. To achieve this, it is important that we establish and implement mechanisms for identifying and understanding the challenges, expectations, and demands of our diverse stakeholders.
To this end, the Kirin Group has a range of opportunities for dialogue with the stakeholders involved in its business. In addition to dialogue, we work together with many of our stakeholders and cooperate in voluntary activities that lead to policy recommendations.

Stakeholder Engagement

Activities to solve the waste plastic problem (Sep 2023)

In order to help solve the problem of plastic waste, the Kirin Group is a member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), which proposes solutions and supports activities to address plastic waste leakage into the environment and create a circular economy for plastics. As a global non-profit, the Alliance convenes more than 70 companies across the plastic value chain with local communities, civil society groups, intergovernmental organisations, and governments. As the Alliance held a summit on Plastics Circularity in Tokyo, members visited the Kirin Brewery Yokohama factory to present the Kirin Group's philosophy and past initiatives regarding plastic recycling, and to exchange opinions.

Engagement with tea farms

In our support for Sri Lankan tea farms to get Rainforest Alliance Certified, which began in 2013, Kirin staff travel to Sri Lanka once a year* to exchange views with the plantation managers and local residents, to identify and address local issues.
We decided to expand support for small farms to obtain certification for sustainable agriculture in 2018 in response to the consultations received from managers of large tea farms that depend on small farms to cover the need to supply a large amount of tea leaves.
The activities for the conservation of water sources on the farms materialized as a result of our dialogue with managers of large farms and local residents who had significant concerns over the impact of climate change on water sources.
*Excluding the period of spread of the new coronavirus.

Engagement with grape producers for Japan Wine

Mariko Vineyard’s has received support from an international NGO, Earthwatch Japan, and its volunteers for ecological surveys. In 2018, Earthwatch Japan and its volunteers provided assistance in mapping the distribution of the shrubby sophora (Sophora flavescens), the sole grass eaten by the larvae of Shijimiaeoides divinus, a critically endangered species, on the sides of rice fields on the Jinba Plateau where Mariko Vineyard is located. Using the survey results, we have been conducting activities to increase the amount of shrubby sophora since 2019. We have been conducting activities to increase the plants of shrubby sophora in which, using the distribution map we created as a reference, we identify shrubby sophora and, with the permission of rice field owners, harvest cuttings of shrubby sophora. Volunteers then grow the cuttings at home and plant them in Mariko Vineyard once they have grown into healthy seedlings. In 2021, teachers from Shiogawa Elementary School, located at the foot of Mariko Vineyard, participated in taking shrubby sophora cuttings, which they then grew in a flower bed in the schoolyard, before students from the elementary school planted the seedlings in Mariko Vineyard at the end of May 2022. We will continue these activities beyond 2022.

Future generations

The Kirin Group, based on its Environmental Vision 2050, promotes engagement with future generations in various ways to get the next generation involved in resolving environmental issues and have a positive impact to society.

The Kirin School Challenge

Since 2014, the Kirin Group has been holding workshops called the Kirin School Challenge, in which junior and senior high school students, who will lead the next generation, learn, think about, and discuss matters for solving various social issues in the world and convey those ideas to their peers.

We held these workshops as group learning sessions on the themes of sustainable agriculture, forestry, and containers and packaging, and the output consisted of posting photos of messages that participants wanted to convey to their generation on social media.

Japan Environmental Youth Network

The Kirin Group has supported the Japan Environmental Youth Network, sponsored by the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency’s Japan Fund for the Global Environment, since 2013 (from the time of its predecessor, the National High School Students Eco-Action Project).
The Japan Environmental Youth Network invites examples of day-today environmental activities from high school students, and selected students participate in the National Convention after passing through regional stages. The Kirin Group serves as a judge at both the regional and national conventions. The environmental activities of high school students often reflect local issues, and they serve as a valuable forum for understanding the issues faced by the younger generation, who will lead the next generation.
As part of our support activities, we welcome high school students to visit our companies once a year. To date, the Head Office in Nakano,the Institute for Packaging Innovation and the Central Research Institute in Yokohama, and Mariko Vineyard, as well as BEER EXPERIENCE, an agricultural corporation in Tono that is funded by Kirin have all accepted visits, providing opportunities for the students to exchange views while observing actual research and production facilities.

Environmental mark program

In 2019, together with the Japan Network for Climate Change Actions (JNCCA), we began trialing the “Environmental mark program,” in which children work together to find environmental marks.
Since 2020, we have been developing and deploying programs that use the “Environmental Mark Discovery Notebook,” enabling us to conduct programs on a more continuous basis. When children find an environmental mark, the leader of the organization checks it and sticks a Kirin “Eco Panda” sticker in their “Environmental Mark Discovery Notebook,” which increases their motivation.

Free distribution of supplementary teaching material on SDGs

The Kirin Group is participating in the production of the section on “SDG 2: Zero Hunger” in the “SDGs Start Book,” supplementary teaching material on the SDGs for elementary students. Since 2021, we have distributed 300,000 books free of charge.

Engagement with experts

The Kirin Group has always emphasized engagement with experts and NGOs to identify social issues and confirm the direction to take. With the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP21 in 2015, the adoption of the SDGs by the UN, and the publication of the TCFD final recommendations in 2017, the Kirin Group believes that engagement with experts, NGOs, and ESG investors is becoming increasingly important.

Experts

In formulating the Kirin Group's Environmental Vision 2050, which was announced on February 10, 2020, we organized roundtable dialogue sessions with stakeholders, with cooperation from experts who had given us valuable advice in the past and we reflected many valuable comments received in our vision.

National Agricultural and Food Research Organization

In ecological surveys on the process of converting derelict farm land into vineyards, we ask the experts at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), our partner in joint research, to hold a joint research presentation once a year. In addition to sharing the insights obtained through this research, we discuss how to proceed into the future.

Contribution to development of various guidelines

The Kirin Group actively participates in the development of various public guidelines. In 2018 and 2019, at the request of the Ministry of the Environment, we sent a member to the Working Group on the Environmental Reporting Guidelines and Environmental Accounting Guidelines and the Working Group on guidance and technical notes supplementing Environmental Reporting Guidelines 2018, where he deliberated with experts about disclosure of environmental information.
Since 2021, in response to a request from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the officer responsible for CSV strategy at Kirin Holdings has participated in the Study Group on Disclosure Policies for Nonfinancial Information. In addition, in 2021 and 2022, we participated in various working groups organized by ministries and agencies.

SBTN Corporate Engagement Program

In February 2021, the Kirin Group became the first Japanese company in the pharmaceutical and food industry to participate in the Corporate Engagement Program held by the Science Based Targets Network. In this program, we cooperate on the development of a scientific approach to setting targets related to the corporate use of natural capital (fresh water, land, oceans, use of resources, climate change, pollution, and invasive species).

The TNFD Forum

In December 2021, we became the first Japanese food and beverage and pharmaceutical company to participate in the TNFD Forum, a network of supporters to share the mission and vision of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), a framework for disclosing information related to risk management, for companies to report and act on risks related to natural capital.

Engagement with investors

We hold an annual “KIRIN CSV Day” for institutional investors to report on our progress in CSV management. 2023 focused on introducing our efforts in containers and packaging and the strengths of Kirin, which includes the Packaging Innovation Institute.

Dialogue with CDP and TNFD

Since 2017, we have been taking the opportunity when the CDP’s chairman or CEO visits Japan to set meetings with Kirin Holdings’ officer responsible for CSV strategy and exchange opinions on responses to climate change.
In 2022, we welcomed the Executive Director of TNFD to Kirin to share information on the Kirin Group's initiatives related to natural capital and exchange views on the beta version of the TNFD Disclosure Framework.