Upon my appointment as President and Representative Director in April 2023, I was appointed Chairman of the Sustainability Promotion Committee.

As a leader, I will strongly promote sustainability so that we can contribute to society at large by identifying, developing, and expanding the seeds of new businesses through the participation of all employees in pursuit of our management principles of "being aware of our membership in society," "sincerely following the right path," and "providing products and services that society demands."

The world is beginning to change at an unprecedented pace. We are moving from a "trade-off" approach, in which social value and economic value are incompatible, to a "trade-on" approach, in which social, and especially environmental, considerations are a prerequisite for economic value. NAGASE will continue to conduct its corporate activities based on this "trade-on" approach.

In the field of manufacturing, we have gone from an era of mass production to an era of "production in appropriate quantities," and although the production and consumption of goods are decreasing compared to the past, the goods themselves will never disappear. NAGASE will continue to work toward solving issues in order to contribute to sustainable manufacturing.

One of the most significant global challenges is addressing climate change, and the NAGASE Group also recognizes climate change as an important management issue. The NAGASE Group is setting targets and managing performance as goals in the ACE 2.0 mid-term management plan.

NAGASE will increase its efforts to address the social issue of carbon neutrality in two steps: visualization of GHG emissions and LCA calculations in the supply chain, and reduction through the proposal of low-carbon products and reduction solutions. Based on the trust NAGASE has cultivated over many years with its business partners, we will continue to make proposals that are unique to NAGASE to address carbon neutrality issues in complex supply chains.

There will always be challenges in manufacturing, and we want to address these challenges as NAGASE, contributing through materials.

In order to contribute to sustainable manufacturing, I would like to focus on the growth of the people at NAGASE, who are the life and soul of the NAGASE Group, and I believe are the source of NAGASE's 190-year history. We do not want to be a company that manages "people," but instead a company that manages "learning places" where people can grow. I believe that a place where people can learn, challenge themselves, grow, and self-actualize is what the company and its employees are aiming for, and what employee engagement is all about. We also want to create a corporate culture where people of different cultures, different views, different genders, and different generations listen to each other, respect each other, and enhance each other's skills in order to solve all kinds of problems.

We will constantly design new business models by combining the wisdom of the diverse employees of the NAGASE Group to solve social issues. We will continue to pursue sustainability and take on the challenge of realizing a safe, secure, and warm society in which people can live comfortably. 

Nagase & Co., Ltd.
Representative Director, President and CEO
Chair, Sustainability Promotion Committee
Hiroyuki Ueshima