Sustainability at NIPPON FILCON
Contributing to Sustainability Through Our Business
Initiatives to Address Global Warming
The drive load reduction forming fabric is able to contribute to a drive load reduction of paper machines for paper manufacturers in the papermaking process, which consumes a large amount of power. The development of this fabric has contributed to a drive load reduction of 10% to 20% for paper manufacturers, and is an initiative that leads to energy savings and measures to combat global warming.
Initiatives to Address Environmental Pollution
AdSep® products promote the development of functional materials under the key phrase of “fusion of adsorption and separation” to realize a resource-recycling society. One of those materials is chelating resin, which incorporates technology for removing, recovering and separating metals.
The sintered resin filter (META-CAT®), which uses processed chelating resin, can adsorb even low concentrations of metals without letting them escape. As a result, this filter can play an active role in the water treatment of factory wastewater, contributing to measures against environmental pollution.
Initiatives to Address an Aging Population
The swimming pool business operated by AQUA PRODUCT CORPORATION contributes to the creation and maintenance of a healthy, safe and secure society for all people, and is also actively engaged in the development of multifunctional swimming pools that promote people’s health and healing in the face of the aging of the population and the declining birth rate that are expected to further increase in the future.
Initiatives to Address Health Problems Caused
by Sick Building Syndrome
The Termimesh System from TMA CORPORATION PTY LTD in Australia is a high-quality stainless steel mesh with mesh apertures that termites cannot pass through. The Termimesh System is installed as a barrier to seal off termite entry points into houses, thereby providing long-term termite protection.
Because the Termimesh System does not use harmful chemicals, there is no need to worry about the chemicals volatilizing and causing health problems. In addition, once the system is installed, there is no need to apply or treat the mesh with chemicals again.
Initiatives to Address Increasingly Severe
Natural Disasters
HydroX® is a system that can produce hydrogen from renewable energy sources and store electricity in the form of hydrogen.
Because the system can operate independently without the need for fossil fuels, it can be used to supply electricity in times of disaster or as a drinking water supply system by installing a filtration system.Note: AQUA PRODUCT CORPORATION has decided to withdraw from the highly specific gravity concrete (Gcon) business as of Saturday, December 31, 2022.
Initiatives to Respect for Human Rights
We recognize that respect for human rights is an important issue in conducting our business activities. In order to further clarify our stance on respect for human rights, we signed and participated in the United Nations Global Compact in 2022 and formulated NIPPON FILCON Group Policy on Human Rights in 2023 based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights Japan other sources. Based on this policy, the Company strives to fulfill its responsibility to respect human rights together with all officers and employees of NIPPON FILCON Group, business partners, and suppliers.
Initiatives to Address Gender Inequality
We are taking the following initiatives to ensure that our employees can balance work and child-rearing and that all employees can work comfortably so that all employees can fully demonstrate their abilities and to create an employment environment where women can play an active role in management positions.
1. Support for the development of the next generation
As support for the development of the next generation, we are addressing issues (1) through (3) below.
Further efforts to reduce long working hours
From FY2021, we have shortened the prescribed working hours per day to bring the total number of prescribed working hours per year under 1,900.
Encouraging men to take advantage of the childcare leave system
Child nursing care leave is a paid leave of absence, and in FY2021, the scope of its application will include the time of vaccination, thus enabling the system to go beyond the requirements of the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act. In FY2020, all employees who requested to take childcare leave have been granted the leave.
Revising the system to match the actual situation of employees who provide nursing care
In FY 2021, we created a “Guide to the Nursing Care System” to inform employees about the system to support balancing work and nursing care. We post the information on the Company’s online bulletin board so that our employees can view it at any time. Going forward, based on hearings with users of the system, we will work to improve the system to bring it more in line with actual conditions and make it easier to be granted.
２. Promotion of women’s participation
Our goal is to achieve a 5% ratio of female managers by the end of November 2024, and the latest status (as of March 1, 2024) was 7.6%. We will continue to work on the following initiatives (1) through (3) to raise the ratio of women in management positions.
- Continuing to provide training to support the development of managers
We provide career-specific training to improve individual employees’ and the organization’s capabilities and increase productivity. We also provide other self-development training programs.
- Actively assigning women to departments where there have previously been only few female employees
We analyze the issues involved in assigning women to departments that previously had only few female career-path employees, take steps to remove obstacles preventing women from pursuing their careers, and assign female career-path employees.
- Maintaining a high ratio of female employees
Recruitment results for April 2022 (career-path positions) Male: 2, Female: 2
Recruitment results for April 2023 (career-path positions) Male: 3, Female: 2
Recruitment results for April 2024 (career-path positions) Male: 5, Female: 1
In addition, at NIPPON FILCON we are publicly disclosing the actual results in wage differences between men and women, the factors contributing to such differences, and our initiatives to address such differences.
- Results:
- All employees
- 68.4%
- Of which, permanent workers
- 70.4%
- Of which, non-permanent workers
- 65.4%
Supplementary information:• Applicable period: FY2023 (Between December 1, 2022 and November 30, 2023)
• Permanent workers: Executive officers, regular workers (managerial and general workforce)
• Non-permanent workers: Contract workers (monthly/ hourly), part timers, commissioned workers, and advisors
Factors contributing to the wage differential between male and female permanent workers include the fact that women often left the workforce before becoming managers and candidates for managerial positions (i.e. senior positions within the general workforce). At NIPPON FILCON, to allow women to continue working for a long time, we are implementing the following measures:
・Expansion of our support systems for work-life balance, such as raising the age of children for which parents are eligible for shorter working hours, and providing paid nursing care leave,
・Enhancement of training programs to help develop female management candidates,
・ Establishment of the Committee for Promoting HR Diversity (December 2022), and
・Implementation of employee satisfaction survey to identify and address issues in promoting the activities of diverse human resources, including women and young employees.Our company does not differentiate between male and female employees, and the wage differences between male and female employees in management and senior management positions are as follows.
- Department Head
- 95.5％
- Section Chief
- 91.3％
- Senior-level position
- 86.9％
A factor contributing to the wage difference between men and women among non-permanent workers is the small number of women among non-permanent workers who become contract employees after retirement, or advisors who are appointed after retiring from internal executive positions.
Initiatives to Address Governance
1.Corporate Governance
NIPPON FILCON recognizes that the purpose and social responsibility of a listed company is to live up to the trust and expectations of stakeholders, ensure management transparency and soundness, sustain and develop the company, and create employment.
In addition, we consider the development and reinforcement of an efficient management structure that can utilize our business resources effectively and rapidly respond to changes in the business environment a critical management priority in the pursuit of sustained mid- to long-term growth in corporate value, and actively implement effective measures to accomplish this.
2.Compliance
Based on the Code of Conduct, we aim not only to comply with laws and regulations, but also to always live up to the trust of our stakeholders, and to practice behavior that conforms to our corporate philosophy and social ethics with awareness our corporate social responsibility.
In order to promote compliance, we have established the NIPPON FILCON Group Compliance Promotion Committee and are continuously engaged in activities to raise compliance awareness among Group employees. To disseminate them to employees, we have established compliance guidelines and distributed them to all officers and employees.
