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 the following two issues.
Resolving concerns over balancing work and childcare
We are sending out information on various programs on maternity/paternity leave and childcare leave, as well as programs that can be applied after returning to work. Providing explanations of systems and programs tailored to individual needs and circumstances, we are striving to resolve the concerns over balancing work and childcare for those employees seeking to take childcare leave.
We will also consider measures to reduce the burden on the workplace of employees taking childcare leave and other childcare-related programs, and to promote understanding among those around them.
Implementing reforms to match the present situation and resolving concerns over balancing work and nursing care
We are informing our employees about the system to support balancing work and nursing care through the manual “Guide to the Nursing Care System”, which is posted on the company’s online bulletin board so that employees can view at any time. We are also providing information on balancing work and nursing care, such as posting videos of case studies of people facing nursing care, and a “Checklist of Things to Understand While Your Parents are Still Healthy” on the company's online bulletin board as part of preparing for nursing care.
In the future, we will take steps to improve the system that is in line with actual conditions and easy to acquire, based on interviews with existing users of the system.
２. Promotion of women’s participation
Our goal is to achieve a 10% ratio of female managers by the end of November 2028, and the latest status (as of March 1, 2025) was 9.3%. We will continue to work on the following initiatives to raise the ratio of women in management positions.
- Continuing to provide training to support the development of next-generation managers
We provide career-specific training to improve individual employees’ and the organization’s capabilities and increase productivity.
Hierarchically, we are working to train human resources to take on future management roles by providing awareness of expected roles and career support for all individuals regardless of gender.
Additionally, we will provide training to support the development of managers regardless of gender for the layer just below management, and work to promote opportunities for promotion to managerial positions. - Creating a workplace where anyone can work comfortably regardless of gender
Through surveys and other means, and with the aim of creating a workplace environment that is comfortable for everyone, regardless of gender, we are working to investigate and analyze issues to improve the workplace environment.
Creating a workplace environment where it is easier to take paid leave
Through surveys and other means, we are working to investigate and analyze factors that promote the taking of paid leave to consider measures that help create a workplace environment where paid leave can be easily taken.
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
- 73.9%
- Of which, permanent workers
- 75.2%
- Of which, non-permanent workers
- 72.0%
Supplementary information:• Applicable period: FY2024 (Between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024)
• Permanent workers: Regular employees (managerial and general positions)
• Non-permanent workers: Contract workers (monthly/hourly), part timers, commissioned workers, and advisors
(1) Factors contributing to the wage difference between male and female permanent workers
Factors contributing to the issue include that in the past, women often left the workforce before becoming managers or candidates for managerial positions (i.e. senior positions within the general positions).
At NIPPON FILCON, we are implementing the following measures in order to allow women to continue working for a long time:
• Enhancement of support systems for work-life balance, such as raising the age of children for which parents qualify for shorter working hours, and providing paid nursing care leave
• Enhancement of training programs to help develop female managerial candidates
• Expansion of job categories for female employees
• Establishment of the Committee for Promoting HR Diversity (December 2022)
• Identifying and addressing issues in promoting activities of diverse human resources including women and young employees through implementation of employee satisfaction surveysOur company implements gender equality in the workplace. The difference in wages between male and female employees in each rank and category is as follows:
Employees
(Regular employees who are under 60 years old at the end of the fiscal year)Department Head and above 97.2% Section Chief level 96.2% Senior-level position 88.2% Mid-level position 90.2% Entry-level position 93.1% Specialists - Senior-aged employees
(Regular employees who are 60 years old and above at the end of the fiscal year)79.6% Of these, the number of specialists, which is a category newly established in December 2022, is small—at around 1% of all regular employees—and there are currently no female employees who fall under this category.
(2) Factors contributing to the wage differential between male and female non-permanent workers
A factor contributing to this is the low number of women among non-permanent workers who are rehired as contract employees after retirement.
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.
