Asahi Group Holdings Wins Gold Award in the ESG Finance Awards Japan

Sustainability

Feb. 20, 2023

Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd.

The first time to receive Gold Award in the Environmentally Sustainable Enterprise Category

(Tokyo, Japan - February 20, 2022) - Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. announces that it has received the Gold Award (the Minister of the Environment Award) in the Environmentally Sustainable Enterprise Category of the 4th ESG Finance Awards Japan, organized by the Ministry of the Environment. This marks the fourth time Asahi Group Holdings has received this award, following Bronze Awards in three consecutive years, and is the first time it has received the Gold Award.

The ESG Finance Awards Japan is an award program established in fiscal 2019 by the Ministry of the Environment. The purpose of these awards is to recognize institutional investors, financial institutions, intermediaries, and companies that have made an impact by actively engaging in ESG finance or environmental and social projects, and to share their efforts with the public, leading to the spread and expansion of ESG finance. The Environmentally Sustainable Enterprise Category, one of the award categories, is presented to demonstrate to investors and companies specific examples of companies that have incorporated significant environment-related opportunities and risks into their management strategies in order to enhance their corporate value, and have achieved positive outcomes in terms of both their corporate value and the environment.

Reasons for Selection for the Gold Award

The Asahi Group should be commended for its efforts to communicate the initiatives of the entire group in an easy-to-understand manner, through disclosing the financial impact of the Group’s sustainability issues and providing a breakdown by region. In order to ensure the sustainability of its business, the Asahi Group has defined the key raw materials related to each business and involves stakeholders in environmental risk assessment from the three perspectives of climate change, water resources, and biodiversity, which deserves commendation as a model for the sustainable procurement of raw materials.
(an excerpt from the judges’ comments by the secretariat of the ESG Finance Award judging panel)

Asahi Group revised the “Asahi Group Environmental Vision 2050” on February this year to accelerate its environmental initiatives further and maximize the impact on business and society. In its new environmental vision, the Group adopts "Planet Positive" as its vision of what it would like the world to be like in 2050, which represents the idea of having a positive impact on the earth, and the Group aims to connect the gifts of nature to future generations.
The Group has set Climate Change, Packaging, Agricultural Raw Materials, and Water Resources as the four pillars of its initiatives, and is working to achieve "Planet Positive," which aims to reduce the burden on the environment from its business to zero, and maximize value to the global environment through circularity.

With the aim of integrating sustainability into its management, Asahi Group has been working on group-wide sustainability by building a global promotion structure and setting targets. The Group has adopted "Cheer the Future” to be its corporate statement, and aim to contribute to a sustainable society through its business.