Company: Suntory Global Spirits

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Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations. Learn how these practitioners and their companies are addressing pressing challenges around water, energy, agriculture, climate change, and what inspires each of them to advance environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and collectively, overall.

Briefly describe your role and responsibilities and how long you have worked with your company.

I’ve been with Suntory Global Spirits since late 2018, and I am currently in the role of Senior Manager for Global Environmental Sustainability. In this role, I provide subject matter expert support for our commercial, fulfillment, marketing, and public affairs functions. The primary focus of this role is to help the business meet the sustainability needs of our customers, monitor sustainability regulations and trends, and also lead a number of global initiatives on behalf of Suntory Global Spirits. I am focused on capturing the voice of the customer from a sustainability perspective – My aim is to ensure that ways of working and communicating, as well as reporting externally within customer conversations, are met. I participate in customer meetings and thought leadership and help provide regular updates to our commercial organization for reporting and monitoring. I work closely with our public affairs and regulatory affairs teams as we evaluate and put a framework behind the risk impact, not only from a reputation perspective but also from a financial and operational one, to ensure that we communicate effectively and that the findings are presented to our leadership. Ultimately, it’s imperative that we maintain awareness of global environmental sustainability trends, tools, and other resources. Translating and applying those potential opportunities helps ensure our programs and strategies stay up-to-date and aligned with the expectations of not only our customers but also internal stakeholders and the community.

How has the company’s sustainability program evolved over the years, and what are your specific priorities for 2024?

In 2021, we launched our Proof Positive sustainability strategy. This is our comprehensive enterprise-wide sustainability strategy with long-term commitments to protect our natural resources for future generations. Sustainability is intrinsically linked with our business. More sustainably sourced ingredients make higher quality products and, in the long run, we don’t have a business if we don’t have the purest water, or the finest grain to make the best whisky.

All of our goals are aligned with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and stem from that vision of a sustainable society, ensuring that we are enriching people’s lives, and those of our communities, and conserving the natural environment. One of the great things about Suntory Global Spirits is that everyone, including our executive leaders, our brand teams, our operations teams, managers, associates, and all the teams on the ground, each play a part in implementing our Proof Positive strategy.

Proof Positive has three pillars: Nature Positive, Community Positive, and Consumer Positive. Nature Positive focuses on minimizing our impact and addresses water, climate, forest, field, and packaging

Consumer Positive is about working to provide information about our products to help consumers make the right choices for personal well-being, build a culture of responsibility, and reduce alcohol-related harm in the community.

Community Positive is focused on nurturing our communities and building a more inclusive and equitable culture where everyone can thrive.

We’ve made some fantastic achievements and progress against our commitments since launching Proof Positive. Whether it’s some of the more recent news about collaborating with governments in terms of ensuring working with local innovators, technology innovators, and governments to use hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to help decarbonize our distillation process, or it’s celebrating a world first by successfully trialing direct fire distillation with hydrogen at our Hakushu distillery, we’ve achieved some really exciting things. We want to push that further and accelerate progress, in partnership with our parent company Suntory Holdings. I think with the team that we’ve got here at Suntory Global Spirits, we are in a really good position to accelerate our progress.

How do you feel being a BIER member will help you successfully address the key areas you are addressing in 2024?

Being part of BIER enables and fosters thought leadership. Collaborating with our peers allows us to share insights and best practices, and create innovative approaches to common problems. The reality is we’re all facing the same situations in many instances, and having that opportunity to collaborate with peers in a safe environment, share insights and best practices, giving our industry the opportunity to be that 1% better than we were the day before. This collective effort also amplifies our impact, ensuring that sustainability initiatives are not only effective but also scalable. I think that’s the important bit: it needs to be scalable for the industry in its entirety and not just for the few. What truly inspires me is that this group really believes that the way forward is through collaboration.

Currently, the regulation landscape is changing, specifically with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The CSRD is a new European Union (EU) legislation that requires all large companies to publish regular reports on their environmental and social impact activities. The collaborative environment that BIER fosters helps drive our sustainability goals as a broader industry and ensures that industry standards are at the forefront, and that our efforts contribute to a more sustainable future for all, collectively. At Suntory Global Spirits, we don’t just do this for corporate benefit; there are much bigger benefits and impacts within our external environment.

Name one of the practical solutions or best practices you learned in working with BIER and its members and why it was important to you and/ or your company.

The Charco Bendito project is a fantastic initiative. It is a first-of-its-kind collaborative watershed project, and I’m proud that Suntory Global Spirits has been a part of it – it is truly transformative. This initiative, a collaborative effort with BIER and eight other manufacturing companies, is focused on restoring and protecting the Lerma-Santiago Water Basin through reforestation, soil conservation, and aquifer recharging activities. The project has provided potable water to over 300 local citizens without prior access to water, supports local, sustainable agro-forestry job opportunities, and protects an important community heritage site. This is a great testament to BIER’s positive impact.

Another practical application of BIER that I appreciate is the establishment of consistent standards and language, as well as amplifying our sector’s results and ensuring that they are practical. BIER’s collaboration enhances credibility, manages risk, and drives market transformation to create demand for certain innovations and activities. Because we’re sharing initiatives like this, hopefully, there’ll be other initiatives, such as Charco Bendito, that will be springing up in other geographical locations where there will be multi-stakeholder companies coming together. We’ve seen this in other areas within BIER where there’s been collaboration across not only sectors, whether it’s spirits, beer, or soft drinks, but across geographies – potentially looking at farming practices, harvesting and general agriculture. It amplifies BIER’s impact and accelerates progress towards that sustainable future for the generations ahead of us. Personally, I think this is why working as part of BIER is really rewarding.

Share a recent accomplishment of your company’s sustainability initiatives/achievements you are most proud of and why.

Throughout 2023, we continued to work towards our Proof Positive targets and commitments. From an environmental perspective, we made significant progress in reducing water consumption and carbon emissions from our own operations. More of our packaging was designed with recycling in mind. We planted hundreds of thousands of trees, and more of our farmers and growers are now using regenerative agricultural practices in their methods. Reflecting on our consumer and community targets, we’ve made significant progress in providing macronutrient information and alcohol content information on our packaging. We started to use and include QR codes so that we can keep consumers informed on pertinent details of our products, and we’ve improved the diversity of our workforce and saw thousands of employees take part in volunteering programs globally.

Areas that we’re currently working on and giving greater focus to include reducing Scope 3 carbon emissions, which are those from the supply chain and our value chain. We aim to increase the use of recycled material in our packaging, making sure that we’re supporting the reduction of our carbon impact and impact on the environment. We are also focused on establishing a stronger supplier diversity program and offering more choices to consumers through new, lower, and no alcohol by volume (ABV) offerings that complement our portfolio.

If you had one superpower that could be used to radically accelerate and scale sustainable best practices, which one would it be, and how would you use it?

As we are all on this journey together, as a society, if I had one superpower, it would be the ability to instantly disseminate knowledge and understanding of sustainable practices across the globe. Imagine, by clicking my fingers, we could instantly educate and raise awareness amongst all stakeholders, from employees and suppliers to consumers and policymakers, ensuring that we talk about the importance and benefits of environmental sustainability and societal sustainability as a whole. In doing so, we could achieve rapid and widespread adoption of best practices, leading to significant environmental improvements. This heightened awareness and understanding would also be a driver for behavioral change resulting in inspiring, innovative solutions and fostering a culture of sustainability within and beyond our industry. With this superpower, the collective efforts towards a more sustainable future for the generations that are yet to come would be exponentially amplified and accelerated and would support a future that is fruitful and prosperous for us all.

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