Message from the Senior Executive Officer of CSV Strategy

Our Group is promoting CSV management through our diverse, solid business portfolio that includes Alcoholic Beverages, Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Pharmaceuticals, and Health Science Businesses, technological capabilities centered on fermentation and biotechnology, and diverse human capital.

In particular, in the Health Science Business, Blackmores Limited, which joined our Group in 2023, identified “People,” “Planet,” and “Community” as the pillars of sustainable growth, and the management strategy of FANCL Corporation, which joined in 2024, is based on their founding philosophy of “Eliminate the ‘negatives’ with a Sense of Justice.” This illustrates that our Group’s CSV management concept is shared throughout the strategies of each Group company.

In 2024, we produced results under each theme of the CSV Purpose. In regard to “Health and Well-Being,” Lactococcus lactis strain Plasma (LC-Plasma, a postbiotic) received the Imperial Invention Prize in 2023. In addition, our collaborative research and development of an LC-Plasma medical vaccine with the Japan Institute for Health Security was accepted as a project for research and development into new modalities contributing to vaccine development by the Strategic Center of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development for Preparedness and Response under the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, so we are now looking to expand the product into the Pharmaceuticals Domain in the future. We will continue to spread immune care habits throughout the world and will also aim to develop products that act as countermeasures to new infectious diseases of future concern. In addition, as a new business in the Health Science Domain, we launched a tableware device, the Electric Salt Spoon, that enhances the saltiness and umami flavors of low-salt foods by using the power of electricity. It has been well-received by consumers who want to decrease their salt intake.

In the fields of “Community Engagement” and “The Environment,” our sale of beer products that contribute to revitalizing local communities, like Kirin Beer Harekaze, and products that support food loss reduction and farmers who produce raw materials, such as KIRIN HYOKETSU mottainai, have been praised by key customers and consumers. Going forward, we will continue to develop products that help address social and environmental challenges while creating economic value, and to engage in activities that improve the productivity of our value chain.

Our Group’s CSV initiatives also strengthen our human capital. In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of applicants who say they want to work with us because we use CSV management to resolve social issues. This growing interest has become a powerful driver for further promoting CSV management.

Our Group will continue to leverage our strengths in technological capabilities and diverse human capital to make innovations and to strive to enhance our sustainable corporate value.

First, the CSV Strategy Department I oversee will identify management issues from a third-party perspective and will carefully examine the degree of impact these issues will have on our Group. This will then be discussed with the Group Executive Committee, the Group CSV Committee, and other organizations, and any final decisions will be made by the Board of Directors.

We had begun to update the GMM even before making FANCL a consolidated subsidiary, and the main elements have not changed significantly since last year. Therefore, we are continuing to examine the GMM for the Health Science Business, which has established its business foundation. In addition, we have received negative comments from investors about our conventional process of reviewing the GMM once every three years when we formulate middle-term management plans. Amidst the rapidly changing environment, we plan to review the GMM in line with our annually rolling three-year goal.

One of the major edits was changing “A responsible alcohol producer” to “Responsibility of Kirin Group which runs Alcoholic Beverage Businesses.” By doing this, as a Group that operates Alcoholic Beverage Businesses, operating companies throughout all our business areas have further solidified their determination to eliminate the harmful consumption of alcohol.

Regarding global alcohol-related problems, we have joined the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) to promote responsible drinking and to eliminate the harmful use of alcohol, including underage drinking. IARD global standards include commitments to displaying responsible drinking messages including age-restriction reminders on product labels of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. IARD members work with social media platforms to enhance age assurance and, as members, we apply five key safeguards on our digital channels, achieving an independently audited 98.2% full compliance rate in 2024.

We will continue to engage in responsible marketing for alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages in our advertisements and sales.

For example, as part of our promotion to raise awareness about responsible drinking, a video on eliminating drunk driving featuring the non-alcoholic beer Kirin GREENS FREE received more than 150,000 views. In addition to the traditional awareness activities conducted for many years at beer factories, the initiative also extended to numerous seminars held at companies and universities, leading to a deeper understanding of responsible drinking.

In February 2024, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released “Guidelines for Health-Conscious Drinking” to contribute to helping people living in Japan determine appropriate alcohol consumption and behaviors based on their individual situations. Meanwhile, alcohol also plays a role in bringing people together. We will remain committed to eliminating the harmful consumption of alcohol while cultivating an alcohol culture that contributes to bringing joy to society through its appropriate consumption.

Another alteration is the relabeling of key economic issues in the GMM that apply to all corporations as “The Fundamentals of Corporation.” Included in this section are “Human Rights,” “Governance,” and “Human Resources.” We have determined the fundamentals of a corporation to be fulfilling its role as a member of society, considering the needs of stakeholders, and acting ethically.

We are preparing to comply with the sustainability disclosure standards published by the Sustainability Standards Board of Japan (SSBJ) in March 2025. Information disclosures are important for stakeholder engagement, increased company transparency, and stronger trust. As a Group, we started preparing early so as to quickly realize efficient gathering of internal data for disclosures that benefit our various stakeholders so we can integrate their opinions in our management. Thus, we aim to make easy-to-understand disclosures that lead to corporate value.

Collecting non-financial data is extremely difficult, and there are many issues concerning their disclosure that we need to resolve, such as the fact that detailed rules can change rapidly, although framework of the rules itself is transparent, and the need to simultaneously release Japanese and English versions as quickly as possible. At present, we are at the forefront of disclosure in the area of the environment, even on a global scale. Our efforts include our responses to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures’ frameworks and the formulation of the Roadmap to net zero. Additionally, our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are going smoothly and have been praised internationally. On the other hand, since we have been focusing on areas where reductions could be achieved relatively quickly with high effectiveness, future initiatives will likely be more complex and expensive. Therefore, we want to enhance the quality of our initiatives. For example, in the containers and packaging domain, we will try our hands at chemical recycling and build a system for recycling materials for plastic bottles. Such initiatives are rare on a worldwide basis, so we will show ourselves to be a global leader in CSV through such innovations.

In the biodiversity area, since the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010, our Group has committed to creating biodiversity, procurement, and other guidelines. Biodiversity is a global issue, but because the weather and the quantity of water resources, etc. differ by region, we will address issues individually by considering the characteristics of each region. By accumulating various insights in this way, we will then tailor any useful approaches to other regions. A prime example of this is Mercian Corporation’s Mariko Vineyard. This vineyard grows grapes for Mercian’s wine, nurtures a rich ecosystem through hedge planting and grass cultivation, and is registered as an Approved Site for the Ministry of the Environment’s 30by30 Alliance for Biodiversity. The Château Mercian Mariko Vineyard is in no way large, but we hope to expand the scale of our social contributions by using the knowledge gained in the vineyard to other farmlands. In February 2025, the Château Mercian Jonohira Vineyard in Yamanashi Prefecture was also recognized as a Nationally Certified Sustainably Managed Natural Site and is considered one of the few examples of a business that leads to Nature Positive. Meanwhile, as we do not own the tea plantations where the leaves for Kirin Gogo-no-Kocha are grown, direct control is difficult. In such cases, we work with the Rainforest Alliance to promote environmental conservation and support the local communities surrounding the farms. We will also apply similar support to coffee farms in Vietnam.

Our leading initiative in 2024 was an investigation into the awareness and purchasing habits of consumers with high interest in sustainability, as a form of engagement with consumers.

As a result, we are starting to see new signs of consumers’ growing interests in sustainability. For example, Kirin Beer Harekaze and KIRIN HYOKETSU mottainai, both launched in 2024, give a portion of their sales to local communities and farmers in their regions of origin. These products enable consumers to indirectly help address social and environmental challenges in those communities. These products are seeing success, such as in receiving endorsement from the younger consumers and retailers and being placed at store fronts for longer than conventional products. Through dialogues with stakeholders, we have realized there is a necessity to take on more forward-looking initiatives.

It has been more than ten years since we started CSV management in 2013, and the understanding and sympathy of employees has grown, but we recognize we must further improve its execution going forward. Toward becoming a global leader in CSV, we hope to create a system in which it is easy for every employee to take action to create a future where our Group’s products and services can support consumers throughout their lives. Please stay tuned to see what new value is produced by our Group’s CSV management!