People worldwide are becoming increasingly aware of the sustainability of society and the global environment.

Against that backdrop, it is more important than ever for companies to fulfill their corporate social responsibility (CSR). In sync with this trend, the UACJ Group has been stepping up efforts to engage with local communities and make its workplaces more comfortable and flexible for employees, while promoting environmentally conscious business activities by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting down on industrial waste, among other initiatives. As a flat-rolled aluminum manufacturer, the Group is working to proactively facilitate the recycling of aluminum products, in particular, in recognition of its obligation to help realize a recycling-oriented society. Nevertheless, inspections related to compliance with GRI Guidelines and ISO 26000 global standards have made us aware that some aspects of the Group’s performance are falling short and need improvement. Therefore, we are intent on enhancing and broadening our CSR activities through the following two initiatives.

The first initiative involves setting up a group-wide organization to promote CSR. At present, our CSR activities are carried out independently by each workplace and group company. In the future, however, we plan to strengthen those efforts and systematically organize and implement them on a group-wide scale. Toward that end, we will clearly designate an organizational framework for promoting CSR and specify tasks for each workplace and group company to pursue based on group-wide policies and goals. We will also have them implement a plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle to monitor their progress and level of achievement.

As a second initiative, we will implement measures to raise awareness of CSR among employees. Instead of having CSR activities implemented by designated departments, we want the activities to be performed on a group-wide level through a framework that allows each of the Group’s employees to participate in some way. Through that process, all employees will become more aware of how the Group’s business activities affect society and the environment, whether positively or negatively, and consider what role they can play to help. In other words, we hope to raise employees’ awareness of CSR by having them become directly involved in related activities.