Key Policies and PhilosophiesMaterial Issues

Sawai Group's business activities are conducted not only with customers, but also with various stakeholders, including employees, business partners, shareholders, local communities and the global environment.

It is essential for the Group to conduct business activities that take into consideration the sustainability of society as a whole, including all of these stakeholders in order to continuously enhance our corporate value based on the Group's corporate philosophy of “Always putting healthier lives first.” To this end, we formulated our Key Sustainability Policies in June 2021. Based on these key policies, we have identified the Group’s material issues from an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) perspective.

Process of identifying Material Issues

The Sawai Group identified its material issues by referring to international guidelines and norms, dialogue with internal and external stakeholders, and the results of external evaluation. These material issues in our sustainability initiatives have been identified and prioritized from two perspectives: stakeholders’ interests and the impact on the Sawai Group. In order to update its initiatives to keep them in line with changes in the business environment and emerging social issues, the Sawai Group will check the appropriateness of these material issues through regular review to confirm changes in their impacts and adapt its business activities to those changes.

Step 1: Creating lists of candidate issues

We held employee workshops, each of which focused on “E” (environmental), “S” (social), or “G” (governance), where the participants created a list of management issues that were considered closely related to the Sawai Group’s medium- to long-term corporate value in line with standards and goals established by international initiatives, including the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the Sawai Group Corporate Philosophy, the Code of Conduct, the Sawai Group Vision, and the status of the business environment.

Step 2: Identifying issues and assessing their impacts

The candidates for material issues listed in STEP 1 were mapped from the two perspectives of stakeholders’ interests and the impact on the Sawai Group, and the issues in each relevant area on the map were categorized into two groups: material issues leading to value creation and material issues as the foundation of sustainable growth.

Step 3: Verifying appropriateness

Targets, initiatives, and monitoring indicators were defined for each of the identified material issues, and their appropriateness was verified by the Group Sustainability Committee. Subsequently, the Board of Directors discussed and reviewed those issues and granted the final approval for them.