For a chemical company to live together with society as one of its vitally important members, all of its business activities have to seek harmony with the social and natural environments and be recognized, appreciated, and accepted by society. Based on this fundamental recognition, the NOF Group has established and complies with the Management Policy Regarding Responsible Care as a policy to be followed by all officers and employees, and has established the Responsible Care guidelines as standards of conduct for embodying this policy.

Under these guidelines, the entire Group addresses environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity conservation, and resource circulation while thoroughly conducting safety assessments and providing accurate information throughout the value chain, from development to manufacturing and distribution.

In 2014, we also signed the Responsible Care Global Charter advocated by the International Council of Chemical Associations, declaring our support and implementation of RC activities. Through unified and continuous improvement, we promote an autonomous and robust safety culture that earns greater trust from society.

The NOF Group is working on various initiatives to ensure the Five Components of Safety. The Group classifies its RC activities into “Five Components of Safety” comprising environmental safety, plant safety, product safety, occupational safety, and transportation safety. Every year, we set RC activity targets, key issues, and implementation items, which are then applied to specific measures for each works, plant, and Group company. These activities have been implemented since 1995. In addition, “dialogue with society,” including information disclosure and exchanges with local communities, has been added to the Five Components of Safety as a theme of the activities.

The RC Committee is chaired by an Operating Officer appointed by the President—Yoshitaka Honda, General Manager of the Corporate Technical Division and Executive Operating Officer—and comprises business division managers and corporate division managers.

To promptly and reliably embed the RC activity policies decided by the RC Committee throughout the Group, each business division has a General RC Manager. Under the guidance of General RC Managers, RC Managers at each site, plant, and research laboratory collaborate with RC personnel at affiliated companies to translate RC targets into specific actions.

NOF Group’s RC activities begin with the annual “company-wide activity goals” established by the RC Committee. Based on this policy, each works, plant, research laboratory, and affiliated company directly examines its past accidents and unique issues and establishes and implements autonomous, workplace-specific “individual activity plans” (Plan and Do).

Activity status is evaluated through inspections and internal audits, promoting “organizational learning” from accidents and incidents (Check). By linking the resulting insights to stronger education and equipment improvements (Action) to reliably implement the complete PDCA cycle, we seek to build a robust safety culture extending beyond mere regulatory compliance and continually elevate our activities.

The NOF Group carries out RC auditing every year Priority theme in audit to ensure the effectiveness of RC activities. We have been continually conducting RC auditing at target domestic and overseas works, plants, and subsidiaries since fiscal 1998. In fiscal 2025, we conducted audits across the entire Group with the priority theme set as “legal compliance.” We checked the progress of RC activity targets and the levels of activities related to the Five Components of Safety at all works and plants, and encouraged them to make improvements.

In addition, we conduct on-site and written audits of all business works and plants to strengthen chemical substance management. In addition to confirming notifications of new chemical substances (FY2025 actual result: 472), we reviewed legal compliance in chemical substance management and the improvement status of items identified in the FY2024 audit, thereby raising the level of chemical substance management. We follow up on the progress of responding to all items indicated in the audit to ensure that all remedial measures are taken.

Priority audit items for the past five years are shown in the table below.

The NOF Group is promoting the acquisition of certification by competent external bodies as a means of improving transparency and objectivity of environmental safety activities.

All of NOF’s works and plants with manufacturing divisions have acquired ISO 14001 certification, and we are systematically implementing environmental improvement activities in consideration of the particulars of business and local characteristics. Six consolidated subsidiaries of NOF have acquired ISO 14001 certification.
　

Rate of acquisition of ISO 14001 certification

• FY2025：47％ (8 of 17 companies) [Covered organizations：NOF Group]
  
• FY2025：53％ (8 of 15 companies) [Covered organizations：Consolidated NOF Group]
• FY2025：43％ (10 of 23 sites) [Covered organizations：NOF Group production sites]
  

Number of product liability cases

• FY2025：0 cases [Covered organizations：NOF Group]

Under the Jiangsu Province Enterprise Environmental Protection Credit Evaluation Measures, Changshu NOF Chemical Co., Ltd. was rated “Blue” in 2021 and “Green” for three consecutive years from 2022 through 2024.

A “Green” rating indicates that a company complies with all legal requirements, has received no complaints from the local community, and has earned full marks on evaluation indicators over the past three years. It also recognizes ISO 14001 certification and participation in voluntary environmental contribution activities.