Message from the CEOGRI:2-22
Pursuing the best in taste and plant-based ingredients to co-create a sustainable future for food

The Fuji Oil Group has sought the best in plant-based ingredients since its founding, and we have grown by contributing to the development of a more varied and better diet through our advances made with faith in technological innovation and a determination to not imitate others. The world today is facing many challenges related to food, from environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss, to food supply concerns as the global population grows, as well as human rights issues in the broad sense of ensuring people’s health and well-being in their life. As the head of a company involved in the food that sustains life, I am committed to facing these issues and resolutely finding solutions. We have set forth our vision as “Together with our stakeholders, we will co-create a sustainable future for food, based on plant-based ingredients that are both delicious and healthy.” With employees in 14 countries around the world uniting the Fuji Oil Group’s strengths, we strive to solve social issues together with our stakeholders, and have positioned these endeavors as the Group’s driver for growth as we work to create and expand a sustainable food system.
In Reborn 2024, our Medium-Term Management Plan, we designated the three-year period from FY2022 to FY2024 as one for strengthening our business platform so that we can evolve into a corporate group that creates new value, and have made enhancing sustainability one of our key policies. The Sustainability Committee is an advisory body to the Board of Directors that is working to create positive value for the environment and society while increasing medium- to long-term corporate value by closely linking material ESG issues to business strategies through deeper discussion.
Looking back at FY2023, thanks to the collective efforts of our employees we achieved our initial management targets for traceability to oil palm plantation*1 and CO2 emissions reduction,*2 and will continue working to reach an even higher level. In sustainable procurement, 60% of palm oil sourced by our Group was RSPO-certified.*3 With an increasing demand for sustainable palm oil, in January 2024 we resolved to establish a joint venture company in Malaysia with Johor Plantations Group Berhad. We will further strengthen our system for a stable supply of high-quality and sustainable palm oil in order to meet the globally rising demand for RSPO-certified oil.
We have also been combining years of proprietary technologies to further develop plant-based food ingredients with the finest taste that only we can provide, and have created more variety and new opportunities that open up a wider level of choices in sustainable food. In the last fiscal year we introduced three new products to our Prime Soy Meat series, which boasts a meat-like fibrous texture and a melt-in-the-mouth quality, and won the Award for Excellence in the 2022 Nikkei Excellent Products and Services Awards. Following up from our 2021 plant-based tonkotsu-style soup, we also released a new seafood dashi product created utilizing our original MIRACORE® technology that gives plant-based ingredients the same satisfaction as animal-based foods. In the area of product sales, through a capital and business alliance we jointly launched “cotta tomorrow,” one of Japan’s largest websites for plant-based foods. The site has increased opportunities for consumers to directly experience healthy and delicious plant-based foods like soy milk cream butter. In the area of R&D, we are developing products and technologies that also focus on food for people in the future, such as ingredients that contribute to brain function and health, alternatives for palm oil and cocoa, and technologies for environmentally responsible food production.
In the food business, which requires a “glocal” perspective, each and every employee is a source for continuous new value creation that also solves social issues. For that reason, the material ESG issues of Securing and Developing Human Resources and DE&I are two important major themes in our Sustainability Management. Since 2022, I have held a total of 52 town hall meetings around the world and listened to the voices of employees working in many different places. The proactive determination of younger employees has made me extremely happy, and at the same time strengthened my resolve to meet their hopes and expectations. I will focus on developing and promoting human resources that can manifest their strengths globally, as well as create workplaces and opportunities for growth so that employees with diverse abilities and backgrounds can continue doing their best. To improve employee engagement and create a greater feeling of unity within the Group, in June 2024 we established the position of Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), and aim to strengthen our human resources foundation that is interlinked with our management strategy from a medium- to long-term perspective.
Amid rapid changes in the external environment that surrounds businesses, more and more stakeholders — including employees, business partners, shareholders and investors — are now recognizing that solving issues related to the natural environment, health, job satisfaction, and sustainability should be positioned at the core of our management. In other words, synchronized corporate and social sustainability are two sides of the same coin when it comes to increasing corporate value sustainably. Moving forward, we will continue to strongly foster co-creation with all of our stakeholders as we establish traceable and sustainable food production globally. We also believe the technologies and products we have developed mainly in Japan to solve social issues also hold the potential to address sustainability issues globally. We will continue to rapidly deliver our unique solutions to food challenges in each country and region with the aim of realizing a sustainable future for food, and sustainable growth for the Group.
Mikio Sakai
Chair of the Sustainability Committee
President and CEO
Fuji Oil Holdings Inc.
- *1 Traceability to plantation: FY2024 target of 85%; achieved 95% in FY2023
- *2 Total CO2 emissions (Scopes 1 and 2): FY2024 target of 23% reduction; achieved 29% reduction in FY2023 (base year: FY2016)
- *3 Oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil