Message from Management

Continuing to grow

April 2011 marks the beginning of the NYK Group's new medium-term management plan, “More Than Shipping 2013.” The previous medium-term management plan, “New Horizon 2010,” which covered 2008 to 2010, focused on three key areas: growth, stability, and the environment. These areas were supported by initiatives to strengthen CSR management, which enabled us to reform our structures and overcome the global financial crisis and recession.

The “More Than Shipping 2013” medium-term management plan articulates a central theme, “grow with Asia, expand across the globe,” and identifies four basic strategies to propel the development of our businesses: (1) leverage our logistics capabilities — effectively capture Asia's growing transportation business, (2) utilize our auto logistics capabilities — actively respond to all auto-transport supply chain needs in Asia, (3) employ our technological capabilities — secure highly advanced energy transportation business, and (4) leverage our global network — proactively expand overseas natural resources and energy transport business.

Developing into a leading global CSR company

• Global Compact Official Site (http://www.unglobalcompact.org/)
• Global Compact Japan Network [in Japanese] (http://www.ungcjn.org/)

Companies must improve their CSR if they are to develop in a sustainable manner in harmony with the communities they serve. This involves enhancements to internal control as well as initiatives to ensure safety, protect the environment, maintain rigorous compliance, and respect human rights and labor standards.

At NYK, we view the training and education of talented seafarers as a crucial component in safety, and to do this we operate a merchant marine academy in the Philippines and offer local training programs in a number of other countries. In the area of environmental protection, we work proactively to develop both hardware and software technologies. For instance, we have installed solar power generators on our ships and air-lubrication systems on our module vessels. Many of these technologies are world firsts. We are also working to reduce CO2 emissions with an initiative to improve fuel efficiency by 10 percent in Fiscal Year 2015 (compared to Fiscal Year 2010 levels).

Compliance is an obvious and important component of CSR activities, and the NYK Group has unfortunately been found to have violated antitrust law in the past. We established an internal task force to prevent such incidents from recurring, and in April of this year we organized a new Fair Trade Promotion Group, which will serve as a strong command center at the company's headquarters to ensure adherence to antitrust law both domestically and in our global activities.

In May 2006, NYK announced its agreement and support of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact (GC hereinafter). The NYK Group has incorporated the 10 principles on human rights, labor standards, environment, and anti-corruption articulated by the GC into its CSR guidelines and endeavors to put them into practice in its business activities. With approximately 50,000 employees around the world, the NYK Group considers initiatives for human rights and labor standards to be particularly important. These areas are overseen by the company's Global Compact Promotion Committee, which is based at the company's headquarters and charged with providing education and training on the GC principles of human rights and labor standards to group companies inside and outside Japan.

Concluding remarks

The unprecedented earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeastern coast of Japan have raised concerns about the prospects for the country's economy and society going forward. The NYK Group is committed to overcoming this trial by practicing the NYK Group Values of integrity, innovation, and intensity (the 3 I's) and capitalizing on our core competencies, the abilities that underline our competitiveness. We will continue to do everything in our power to contribute to the sustainable development of society as a good corporate citizen that is supported by stakeholders around the world. We look forward to the frank and honest opinions and suggestions of all our stakeholders.