The Investor Participant Voices series highlights the expertise and experiences of Nature Action 100 Investor Participants.
Seiji Kawazoe and Shinichi Kohguchi are both Senior Stewardship Officers at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management. In this interview, they reflect on how investor participants used the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark to engage Ajinomoto on nature action.
What are your reflections on engaging Ajinomoto under Nature Action 100?
Ajinomoto is a Japanese multinational food and biotechnology corporation that produces seasonings, cooking oils, frozen foods, beverages, sweeteners, amino acids, insulating films, and pharmaceuticals, with operations in 31 countries. Its business depends on commodities like sugarcane and cassava, exposing it to a range of nature-related risks and opportunities. In 2024, Ajinomoto became an early-adopter of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures framework.
Given its global footprint, Ajinomoto faces challenges in assessing and managing risk across broad commodity supply chains, prioritizing by commodity, and setting forward-looking nature-related strategies. The Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark served as an important starting point to determine areas of focus for the engagement.
How does Ajinomoto perform against the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark?
Ajinomoto meets all criteria on the Ambition indicator but not the Assessment, Target, and Implementation indicators, and partially meets the Governance and Engagement indicators. The engagement team of Nature Action 100 Investor Participants has therefore focused supporting the company in improving its nature-related disclosures and surfacing projects and priorities it can actively address.
On the Assessment indicator, Ajinomoto had not identified its nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities at the operational level or across its value chain. It has since conducted a LEAP assessment to prioritize commodities and regions, making progress on this indicator.
A key issue the company raised was traceability of soft commodities, which is a common challenge across the food sector. For example, the lack of information about the routes from farm to product in meat sourcing undermines supply chain transparency and traceability. Palm oil traceability is more advanced in some sourcing areas, but bulk shipments still pose challenges.
What strategies did the engagement team employ in discussions with Ajinomoto?
Through annual meetings with Ajinomoto, the engagement team identified that a more practical target would be to support the company in pursuing incremental improvements in their palm oil management and approach to regenerative agriculture. The team is also considering capacity building sessions for ground-level practitioners on specific topics such as regenerative agriculture. The company has so far been proactively engaging with investors on its disclosures.
What progress has the engagement team made in supporting Ajinomoto’s engagement with their nature-related risks?
Following the initial engagement, Ajinomoto’s executive committee prioritized high-impact soft commodities including palm oil, soybeans, beef, and paper in 2025. The company further strengthened its commitment to prevent deforestation. On assessment, the company is identifying regions with environmental sensitivities. Cassava and sugarcane are identified as crops with high dependency, and the relevant sourcing regions will be disclosed soon.
On traceability, Ajinomoto’s instant noodle business in Thailand has made progress in palm oil traceability thanks to a simpler domestic supply chain. More broadly, Ajinomoto’s work with industry associations and government agencies are advancing regenerative agriculture.
What were some challenges of the engagement?
In dialogues with the engagement team, Ajinomoto provided insight into the disclosure limitations it faces across different commodities. With cattle, for example, traceability beyond the slaughterhouse is difficult as information on individual farms and processing plants is limited. Ajinomoto also pointed out barriers to making progress in other areas, including analysis and evaluation of natural capital-related initiatives, setting KPIs to link executive compensation to nature-related progress, and navigating regenerative agriculture policies in different jurisdictions and tailoring approaches to each site’s unique methods, soil quality, and outcomes.
The engagement team will focus on supporting Ajinomoto as it makes further improvements, including whether Ajinomoto has set KPIs to monitor priority soft commodities and whether those KPIs are reflected at the executive and board level.
Seiji Kawazoe is a Global Initiative Fellow at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, where he oversees stewardship for global institutional investment assets, including public and private pension funds. He is actively involved in various global engagement projects and holds several leadership roles: Board Governor at ICGN; former rotating Chair of the Climate Action 100+ Steering Committee; Steering Committee Member at Nature Action 100; Committee Member of the Investor Policy Dialogue on Deforestation (IPDD); Chair of the Forest and Land Use Change Working Group at AIGCC; and Alliance Member at TISFD. In addition, Seiji leads corporate engagement and stewardship activities, primarily across the Asia-Pacific region.
Shinichi Kohguchi is a Senior Stewardship Officer at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management. Since 2021, Shin has advanced solutions to ESG challenges through stewardship-focused dialogue with investee companies, aiming to enhance corporate value and promote sustainable growth across society. At Nature Action100, he leads engagement with Ajinomoto. Since 1990, Shin has built over three decades of asset‑management experience as an equity analyst in Japan and the United States, primarily covering the healthcare and cosmetics & toiletries sectors.