Society
- Basic Policy for Sustainable Procurement
- Efforts for Safety, the Environment,
Disaster-Risk Reduction, and Product Quality - Coexisting with Local Communities
Basic Policy for Sustainable Procurement
The Nippon Denko Group promotes collaboration, coexistence, and mutual prosperity throughout its supply chains based on the Partnership-Building Declaration, and engages in fair and equitable trade based on its management philosophy.
Based on our basic policy for procurement, we work with our suppliers to engage in procurement activities that account for compliance, reducing environmental impact, respecting human rights, standards, and other social responsibilities, and to promote efforts to combat climate change and other environmental issues, respect human rights, and resolve other societal issues.
1 | Rigorous compliance | We have established systems for rigorous compliance and make efforts to observe laws, regulations, and social norms. |
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2 | Consideration for reducing the environmental impact (global environment) of procurement activities |
We make efforts to reduce the impact of our procurement activities on the global environment. |
3 | Respecting human rights, consideration for work environments | We respect the human rights of each and every individual in our supply chains in accordance with the Nippon Denko Group Basic Policy on Human Rights. |
4 | Providing opportunities for competition through fair and equitable trade | We comply with Antimonopoly Act and other laws and regulations for fair trade and engage in procurement activities in accordance with wholesome commercial customs and social norms. We do not engage in unfair trade that exploits our superior position. |
5 | Ensuring the safety and competitiveness of our products and services | We place the utmost priority on ensuring the safety of our products and services and take steps to improve competitiveness in terms of quality, price, and turnaround. |
6 | Response mineral procurement | We promote the establishment of supply chains free of minerals mined from regions under conflict or plagued with human rights violations. |
7 | Establishing trust-based relationships | We establish trust-based relationships with our suppliers through the aforementioned activities in an effort toward coexistence and mutual prosperity. |
Efforts for Safety, the Environment, Disaster-Risk Reduction,
and Product Quality
Safety and Health
The Nippon Denko Group is augmenting its occupational safety and health management system and engaging in activities to ensure the safety and health of its employees in line with two basic policies: making it a principle to respect human life in the execution of all operations under the assumption that ensuring safety is the utmost priority, and striving to prevent work-related accidents under the belief that prevention is the foundation of safety and health management.
Creating safe, secure workplace
The Nippon Denko Group believes in the importance of predicting and mitigating risks to prevent work-related accidents, and considers reliably predicting hazards and identifying and addressing risks to be the focal measures of safety activities. Given that open workplaces are a prerequisite for promoting these activities, we devote energy to stimulating communication and take steps to strengthen collaboration both within the company and its affiliates in an effort to create workplaces where everyone can work with a sense of safety and security. We also conduct internal safety audits to further augment our safety activities and promptly share and propagate examples of accidents at other companies to prevent similar accidents from occurring within the Group.
In 2022, we promoted efforts based on reflections on our performance in 2021 in addition to these focal measures. As a result, we experienced only 1 lost time injuries, which is fewer than last year. We intend to continue these efforts in 2023 with the goal of zero lost-time or worse injuries.
Target | |
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Number of lost-time or worse injuries: | 0 |
Acquiring certification from third-party organizations
The Nippon Denko Group uses its ISO 45001 management system to create a structure for eliminating work-related accidents and other forms of risk with the aim of creating work environments where employees can work with a sense of safety and security. We will continue making efforts to acquire these certifications at all of our locations.
Creating comfortable workplaces and promoting physical and mental health
The Nippon Denko Group promotes new 5S training and makes other efforts to ensure and maintain comfortable work environments, and steadily implements measures to improve facilities with the aim of preventing occupational diseases. We also promote employee health care through measures such as coordinating with industrial physicians to accommodate work style reform, conducting stress checks and promoting measures for mental health, and raising awareness about the many ways to prevent lifestyle-related illnesses, lower back pain syndrome, and the loss of physical capacity.
Disaster Risk Reduction
The Nippon Denko Group has established systems for disaster risk reduction management and disaster response and banded together as a Company to engage in other disaster risk reduction activities to enhance each and every employee’s capacity for disaster risk reduction with the aim of eliminating disaster response incidents.
Disaster risk reduction activities
The Nippon Denko Group has established manuals and conducts drills for responding to typhoons, earthquakes, tsunami, and other natural disasters, and also takes steps to reduce risk in responding to fires, explosions, and other plant disasters, specifically by (1) conducting risk assessments in each location to identify disaster risks, (2) deploying technical and organizational measures to reduce the risks and managing any residual risks, and (3) conducting various drills (e.g. general disaster prevention drills, first-response drills for fires).
Target | |
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Number of disaster response incidents: | 0 |
Quality
Trust-based relationships with customers are most essential for conducting business activities, and quality is the foundation of these relationships. The Nippon Denko Group promotes activities to improve quality with the aim of providing products and services that satisfy customers. Under our management system, which we established based on ISO 9001, engineers, sales personnel, and plant workers unite to implement quality activities with the aim of ensuring and further improving quality to be worthy of our customers’ trust.
Quality assurance system
The quality assurance departments at our locations take the lead in maintaining and managing quality management systems, and works with these divisions to formulate and implement measures to resolve quality-related issues. We also promote e-learning on quality compliance, training on basic actions for quality, and other efforts to increase employees’ awareness of quality and prevent quality-related incidents, and conduct internal quality audits and take other steps to identify and prevent quality-related risks. Furthermore, we steadily promote standardization and systematization with the aim of improving the reliability of our tests and inspections of outgoing products.
Coexisting with Local Communities
Beautification activities
Beautification activities
The Nippon Denko Group engages in environmental beautification activities with the aim of contributing to the beautification of local environments. In these activities, our employees regularly clean up the areas around our plants.
Ocean liner excursion for elementary school students who live near the Tokushima Plant
Ocean Liner Excursion for Local Elementary School Students
Each year, our Tokushima Plant provides local elementary school students with the opportunity to go on an excursion to see the ocean liners that carry manganese ore from our mines. On these excursion, we not only allow the children to board the ocean liners, but also set up events for them to interact with the foreign crewmembers, prepare samples of our ores and ferroalloy products, and more.
Participating in the Awa Odori Festival under the name “Denko-ren”
Participating in the Awa Odori Festival
In an effort to foster deeper communication with the local community, we actively participate in various local events and activities.
One such event is Awa Odori, a dance festival held in Tokushima Prefecture every August. For more than 30 years, we have participated in Awa Odori under the name “Denko-ren.” We intend to continue entering our Denko-ren group into the festival to help pass down this traditional culture.
Solar power generation facilities (Koriyama Plant)
Supplying Electricity to the Local Community During Emergencies
As part of our efforts to realize a decarbonized society, we installed solar power generation facilities at our Koriyama Plant. Although we use the green electricity generated by the facilities throughout the plant, we are prepared to provide the electricity to the local community as an emergency power supply in the event of a disaster or power outage. The Nippon Denko Group is aiming to contribute to the local community as well as to sustainable global environmental conservation.