Efforts for CSR

Top > Efforts for CSR > Site Report > Akashi Factory

Akashi Factory Overview

As a food factory in the Kansai area, we supply margarine and shortening products. Seventy-five percent of the workers at the factory are employees of affiliate companies.

Address	1183-15 Rokubun-ichi Inami-cho, Kako-gun, Hyogo, 675-1112
Site Area	41,000m²
Production Started	1966
Main Products	Margarine, Shortening, High-viscosity Cream, Sachet Products and Products for Commercial Use, such as Breadmaking Improver

Download the Site Report (PDF)

Digest

Looking ahead, the Akashi Factory will continue to contribute to society as a community-based food manufacturing facility. To this end, we will maintain our management focus on the four core standards of labor safety, environmental safety, quality safety and facility safety. In every facet of its business activities, the Akashi Factory is underpinned by the overarching goal of contributing to "a harmonious, environmentally sound society," the fundamental environmental principle of Hyogo Prefecture, as well as the charter of the town of Inami, which espouses "the creation of a livable town built on its beautiful nature and traditions, filled with hope and a sense of mutual collaboration in response to the progress of time."

The Akashi Factory set up and launched "the Kaizen (Improvement) Project 2005," an improvement activity organization. Guided by this Project, we have been focusing diligently on improvement activities across wide ranging companies and divisions since 2006. At the same time, the Akashi Factory has established three committees whose activities include efforts to raise employee awareness with regard to (1) the elimination of loss and wasteful practices; (2) improvements in Seisan Gijyutsu (SG) ? production engineering; and (3) environmental and energy conservation.

Among a host of initiatives aimed at delivering environmentally friendly and safe products that leverage energy conservation and yield improvement activities, the Kaizen Project Fiscal 2008 sought to simplify packaging material processes and manufacturing methods.

The Akashi Factory generates a wide variety of waste in the natural course of its production activities. In fiscal 2008, we achieved a substantial 22% reduction in the production of waste compared with the previous year. This was a significant milestone given the year-on-year reduction target of 1%. This positive result was largely due to the effective implementation of the ISO22000 Food Safety Management System, in-house initiatives under the Kaizen Project 2006, which included cutbacks in production line cleaning reflecting efficient adjustments to production and manufacturing methods, as well as other improvement measures. In the future, we will continue to steadily implement ISO22000 management, the Kaizen Project 2006 and the 5R principles of Refuse (don't buy); Reuse (use multiple times); Repair (maintain); Reduce (rationalize); and Recycle (regenerate). Through these means, the Akashi Factory will redouble its efforts to achieve its 2010 objectives.

Turning to the Factory's zero emission endeavors, results came in at 2.5% in fiscal 2008. In fiscal 2009, Akashi Factory estimates it will achieve a level of approximately 0.3%, significantly lower than the established target of 0.5%, as it considers a variety of options including the reuse of such waste materials as incinerated ash generated through intermediary treatment processes.