Environment

Biodiversity Preservation

In recognition of the importance of the preservation of biodiversity, the Nissui Group revised its Environmental Code in 2014 and upholds preservation of biodiversity in its Policies.
Access to resources is the strength of the Nissui Group. The Group’s ability to procure materials from around the world, with focus on marine products, is the wellspring of its value creation. By the same token, however, our business activities are heavily dependent on natural capital and easily impacted by changes to it. Always mindful that we do business by receiving the bounty of earth and sea, we constantly gauge the dependence and impact of our value chain on biodiversity. The Nissui Group strives to avoid and minimize negative impacts from its operations, and to restore and regenerate where possible.


TNFD Report

system, 株式会社ニッスイ サステナビリティ推進部, 外部協力者, 株式会社ニッスイ コーポレートコミュニケーション部, 株式会社ニッスイ 人事部人事課

Initiatives for TNFD Recommendations

The Nissui Group recognizes the preservation of biodiversity as a vital management issue. 3, The Group joined the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) Forum in September 2023, and registered as a TNFD Adopter in December 2023.

Participation in External Initiatives

Evaluating Risks and Opportunities with the LEAP Approach

The Nissui Group implemented the LEAP (Note) approach on a trial basis, assessing its dependence and impact on nature and evaluating associated risks and opportunities. In the LEAP approach, companies typically identify their geographical regions of priority and assess their dependence and impact on its natural environment in the “Locate” step. The Nissui Group modified this approach, identifying no geographical region but instead evaluating the upstream processes of its value chain, fisheries and aquaculture, from a bird’s-eye view.

(Note): The LEAP (“Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare”) approach is an analytical process developed by TNFD to serve as a guide on evaluating nature-related risks and opportunities.

Locate: Find the Group’s points of contact with nature

  • Natural marine resources (direct operation and procurement): 21 of the world’s FAO Major Fishing Areas
  • Farming sites (direct operation): 32 locations in Japan and 39 locations outside Japan

Evaluate: Diagnose dependence and impact

To clarify the relationship between the Group’s dependence on nature for its fisheries and aquaculture operations and the impact those operations have on nature, the Nissui Group conducted a two-step evaluation. First, the Group used ENCORE (Note) to conduct a primary evaluation. Next, the Group conducted a secondary (qualitative) evaluation tailored to the current state of Group operations.
The results showed that fisheries in the Group were found to be highly dependent on marine habitat services for specific regions of ocean and marine resources. The degree of impact on resource quantity and on species depended on the size of the catch. In the case of aquaculture, the Group was found to be dependent on particular areas of land, water and sea used, as well as on services to adjust ecosystem features such as water temperature and quality. Impact on nature was found in the form of deterioration of water quality and water pollution around farming sites.

(Note): Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure (ENCORE) is a tool for evaluating dependence and impact on natural capital for each business sector and production process.

【図版】Evaluate: Diagnose dependence and impact

Assess: Evaluate risks and opportunities

Based on the evaluation of dependence and impact on nature it conducted in the “Evaluate” step above, the Nissui Group deduced the nature-related risks and opportunities to which it needed to respond.

Risks/opportunities Main risks/opportunities expected Impact on business Main responses
Fisheries Physical risk Depletion of marine resources
  • Reduced procurement volumes
  • Increased procurement costs
  • Further strengthening of access to resources
  • Construction of procurement networks
  • Strengthening of aquaculture business
  • Development of substitutes for marine resources
Transitional risk Strengthening of fishing regulations
Opportunities Stabilization of supply chains through sustainable procurement
  • Stabilization of revenues, expansion of sales channels
  • Confirmation of status of resources when procuring
  • Acquisition of fisheries certification and increased handling of certified products
Aquaculture Physical risk Suspension of business and increasing management costs from increasing severity of wind and flood disasters
  • Losses from damage of aquaculture facilities
  • Introduction of submergible fish cages and reinforcement of facilities
  • Strengthening capabilities in land-based aquaculture
Spread of fish diseases
  • Loss of assets from mortality of fish stocks
  • Preventive management using N-AHMS, an original farmed-fish health management system
Transitional risk Strengthening of environmental regulations on aquaculture
  • Reduction of scale of business and closure of fish farms
  • Financial impact from fines and taxes
  • Environmental monitoring of fish farms
  • Reduction of environmental impact from feed (EP feed, automatic feeding systems)
  • Shift to off-shore farming
Opportunities Use of full-life cycle aquaculture technology to reduce dependence on natural resources
  • Strengthening resilience, establishing competitive superiority
  • Establishment of technology and expansion of range of fish handled
Reduction of impact on the marine environment using land-based aquaculture technology
Reduction of environmental impact through smart aquaculture
  • Reduction of aquaculture cost, improvement of aquaculture performance
  • Improvement of the work environment
  • Production management using AI and IoT
  • Development of remote feeding systems
Common to both Opportunities Changing consumer purchasing behavior (Increase in demand for sustainability-oriented products)
  • Expansion of sales
  • Improvement of business sustainability, increase in handling of certified products
  • Diligent disclosure

Prepare: Prepare responses to nature-related risks and opportunities and issue reports

The Nissui Group has made “preserve the bountiful sea and promote the sustainable utilization of marine resources and their procurement” its materiality. Accordingly, the Group is committed to securing the sustainability of marine resources and preserving the marine environment as vital management issues.Under the umbrella of the Sustainability Committee, the Group has established five subcommittees: the Marine Resource Sustainability Subcommittee, the Sustainable Procurement Subcommittee, the Marine Environment Subcommittee, the Plastics Subcommittee and the Environmental Subcommittee. These subcommittees work across organizational lines to grapple with sustainability issues.
The Nissui Group is proud to participate in SeaBOS, an international initiative to preserve the marine environment and marine resources and the sustainable use of resources. In cooperation with leading companies and scientists in seafood industries around the world, the Group is working diligently to find workable solutions.

Object Metric Target Target fiscal year
Fisheries and aquaculture Sustainable procurement rate Procurement of sustainable marine resources: 100% 2030
Procurement of endangered (marine) species For marine resources in severe danger of extinction (Note), the Group will suspend the procurement of those resources if tangible and scientific measures are not taken to recover them by 2030.
CO2emissions Reduced by 30% (Scopes 1,2. Base year: FY2018)
Aquaculture Degree of replacement of polystyrene foam floats in nylon covers Replacement with floats that have a low risk of becoming plastics that outflow into the ocean: 100% 2024

(Note): Category I endangered species as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (species listed as critically endangered (CR) or endangered (EN) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species).

system, 株式会社ニッスイ サステナビリティ推進部, 外部協力者, 株式会社ニッスイ コーポレートコミュニケーション部, 株式会社ニッスイ 人事部人事課

Participation in “Tottori Kyosei-No-Mori (Tottori Co-Existence Forest)”

The Forest that Protects Spring Water Nurturing Fish and the Sea

Tottori Prefecture is the home of the Nissui Group companies Yumigahama Suisan Co., Ltd., which is engaged in the aquaculture and processing businesses and Kyowasuisan Kabushiki Kaisha, a fishery company. The farming-related facility of Yumigahama Suisan is located at the foot of Mt. Senjozan which is in Daisen-Oki National Park of Kotoura Town, Tottori Prefecture and trees in certain parts of the surrounding broad-leaved forest have died and required maintenance.
On October 30, 2018, Tottori Prefecture, Kotoura Town and Nissui entered into a forest preservation and management agreement in order to preserve the surrounding 5.933 hectares of forest as the “The forest that protects spring water nurturing fish and the sea.”
On April 7, 2020, the Nissui Group was certified as a collaborative business by the Japan Committee of the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity (UNDB-J) for this forest preservation activities.

[Picture] The Forest that Protects Spring Water Nurturing Fish and the Sea

Preservation Activities

Continual preservation work is essential to protecting forests.
At the Nissui Group, ever since we entered into the Agreement, we have been conducting employee participation-based preservation activities on a yearly basis. For the participants, these activities become a valuable formative experience in which they get a real sense of the interrelatedness of the “forest, river, and sea,” and their relationships to them. Moreover, through interactions with the people of Tottori Prefecture involved, it is an opportunity for participants to gain familiarity with the local culture and are able to cultivate relations among members of Group companies.

No. of participants to date
fiscal year FY2018 FY2019 FY2020 FY2021 FY2022 FY2023
Participants 86 104 31 27
(Green Scouts (Note) +
Supervisors/ Prefectural staff, etc.)
37 73

(Note) Green Scouts: The Green Scouts are an organization sponsored by the Tottori Prefecture Planting Trees Promotion Committee. Its purpose is to get the children who will eventually lead the next generation of society to familiarize themselves with greenery, develop an affection for it, and protect and nurture it, and in doing so cultivate an attachment to their home communities and grow into people with well-rounded minds and the capacity to love their fellow human beings.

No. of trees planted to date (Selected from local tree species)
  Japanese horse chestnut Painted maple Yamazakura cherry
FY2018 110 105 110
FY2019 10 10 10

Since FY2021, we have been collaborating with Tottori University to conduct a forest survey with the aim of making our conservation activities more scientific. The results of the study showed that about 80% of the seedlings planted in our activities in FY2018-2019 were active and growing well as of 2021. We will undertake another survey of the vegetation inside and around the “Forest that Protects Spring Water Nurturing the Fish and the Sea,” and plan to make further use of local species of trees in our tree-planting activities in FY2022 and beyond. We hope to further improve our activities so that we can establish a forest that is closer to one that would naturally occur and that we can preserve the forest in a practical manner.

On September 24, 2023, participants from Nissui Group's operations in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions, such as Yumigahama Suisan Kaisha and Kyowa Fishery, in addition to stakeholders from Tottori Prefecture, gathered for the 6th conservation activity. The “Exchange Meeting of Green Scouts” was also held on the same day, where 18 elementary school students received an introduction to Nissui Group's business and a lecture on “forests, rivers, and seas.” The event saw participation from 8 members of Yumigahama Suisan Kaisha, 21 from Kyowa Fishery, 3 from Nissui's Chugoku-Shikoku branch, 4 from Tottori Prefecture, 7 from the Central Tottori Forestry Association, 1 from the Tottori Prefecture Chubu Regional Office, 1 from Kotoura Town, 3 from the Tottori Prefecture Planting Trees Promotion Committee, 20 from the Green Scouts, and 5 from Nissui’s secretariat, totaling 73 participants. Participants spent approximately 45 minutes cutting underbrush and working up a sweat.

[Picture] Preservation Activities 1
[Picture] Preservation Activities 2
[Picture] Preservation Activities 3
system, 株式会社ニッスイ サステナビリティ推進部, 外部協力者, 株式会社ニッスイ コーポレートコミュニケーション部

“Kodera Kenko no Mori” (“Kodera Health Forest”)

Nissui Forest

On October 2, 2023, a cooperation agreement for corporate forest creation activities was signed between Hyogo Prefecture, Himeji City, the Hyogo Prefecture Greening Promotion Association, and Nissui. Under this agreement, Nissui’s Himeji General Plant as a main body of this activity will participate in forest conservation activities aimed at enhancing the public benefits of forests, including water resource conservation and combating global warming.
The Himeji General Plant has designated the forest area in the Ichikawa River basin, the source of its industrial water, as the “Nissui Forest” within the Kodera Health Forest. Starting in November 2023, the plant began forest conservation activities focusing on water resource conservation, community integration, and raising environmental awareness among employees. These activities, which are planned to be held twice a year, will include underbrush clearing and forest education events conducted under the guidance of forest volunteers.

[Photo] “Kodera Health Forest”
system, 株式会社ニッスイ サステナビリティ推進部, 外部協力者, 株式会社ニッスイ コーポレートコミュニケーション部, 株式会社ニッスイ 人事部人事課

Preservation Activities of Utsunuki Green Zone

“The Utsunuki Green Zone” is a “satoyama (village forests)” adjacent to the Nissui Tokyo Innovation Center, which was built in 2011. 
Every year since 2013, activities have been conducted, under the instruction of the “Utsunuki-Midori-no-Kai,” to preserve the natural environment in areas surrounding the business location and to promote co-existence with the regional community. The activities begin with a classroom lecture at the log house within the zone, in which participants learn about the connection between the “forest, river and sea,” as well as the flora and fauna of the "satoyama," which is followed by various tasks such as mowing the underbrush in the "satoyama.”

Nissui conducted its ninth round of activities in the Utsunuki Green Zone on November 12, 2022. As a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the scale of the event was reduced, with 12 employees of Nissui. On the day of the activities, participants divided into three groups, each of which set out on a hike through the satoyama (woodlands surrounding the village). After walking for about an hour with members of Utsunuki-Midori-no-Kai (“Utsunuki Green Society”), listening as they talked about the trees in the forest and the birds that inhabit it, the participants repaired stairways and trimmed undergrowth in the Green Zone.

[Picture] Preservation Activities of Utsunuki Green Zone
[Picture] Preservation Activities of Utsunuki Green Zone
[Picture] Preservation Activities of Utsunuki Green Zone

Nissui has been a supporting member of “Utsunuki-Midori-no-Kai” since fiscal 2015.

system, 株式会社ニッスイ サステナビリティ推進部, 外部協力者, 株式会社ニッスイ コーポレートコミュニケーション部