Message from the CEO
Going back to our roots and co-creating the social value of food, unique to the Fuji Oil Group
In May 2022 we formulated our Medium-Term Management Plan, Reborn 2024. Here we set one of our key policies as enhancing sustainability (sustainability strategy aligned with management strategy). We also laid down 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.” In April 2023, this became the vision of our Group Management Philosophy. I feel that our top-down approach and Fuji Oil Group's sustainability-oriented corporate management has finally taken hold in our workplaces. In a world where it is difficult to predict socioeconomic conditions and the environment, we must comprehensively identify and bring together the various risks and opportunities across the value chain. It is critical that we address them urgently together with our stakeholders. We believe that the quickest way to realize our vision is to have each one of our employees go back to our Group’s DNA of not imitating others and dedication to plant-based ingredients, and to quickly perceive social issues and work on our unique way of creating new value from plants.
In FY2022, we evolved into a corporate structure that encourages self-directed sustainability activities from Group companies. To integrate the concept of sustainability into our business strategies, our chief officers with voting rights are included in the Sustainability Committee, an advisory body to the Board of Directors. We have also included our regional headquarters representatives from FY2022, and the heads of each business division from FY2023. We have therefore created a company-wide governance structure that deliberates and monitors sustainability-related risks and opportunities from the perspectives of both the regional headquarters and the business divisions.
As a food company operating in the global food system, our Group has worked for the well-being of people and the planet, and has been engaged primarily in the business of plant-based ingredients since the beginning. The ratio of RSPO-certified palm oil sourced and produced by our Group has been increasing year by year because of the growing interest of our customers for sustainable raw materials in recent years. In July 2022, we launched GOODNOON, our flagship plant-based food to realize our vision. Together with our partners, we have started selling plant-based butter and other products online to create the next “surprisingly delicious” products with plant-based ingredients and to make plant-based foods more accessible to consumers. I strongly believe that our mission as a Group is to keep on facing challenges in new business domains.
To achieve our goal of building a sustainable value chain for food, we must first provide safe and reliable food, as well as create a safe and secure workplace for our employees. We will step up our efforts to instill awareness that safety comes first, and ensure that we provide a good working environment to continue taking on the highly challenging goals. Innovations are also required to find solutions to the increasingly complex social issues worldwide. Such innovations are produced by people with a wide range of skills and diverse backgrounds. I believe that each one of us must use our creativity more than ever before, and that we must be able to cooperate and get other people involved. Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is the key to developing the human resources with these abilities. As a top management priority, we will provide equitable opportunities and evaluations to all Group employees and carry out inclusive human resource management, in order to encourage active engagement from a diverse range of human resources.
We will continue practicing sustainability management with all our employees and together with our diverse stakeholders, and taking on challenges to create a world where everyone can taste the deeper joys of food.
Mikio Sakai
President and CEO
Fuji Oil Holdings Inc.