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Occupational Health and Safety

We aim to create safe working environments by adopting a Health and Safety Management Policy each fiscal year, and by sharing our philosophy on occupational health and safety with employees.

Basic Policy on Health and Safety Management

Our goal under the Health and Safety Management Policy is to achieve a continual reduction in accidents. We are achieving this by maintaining a PDCA cycle in which accidents are analyzed each year in order to identify issues so that countermeasures can be included in the Health and Safety Management Policy for the following fiscal year.
The Health and Safety Management Policy includes both our basic policy and priority action items. It is reported to senior management after deliberations by the Health and Safety Management Committee.

Basic Policy on Health and Safety Management

Priority action items

Occupational accidents

• Raise awareness about hazards by entrenching the practice of reporting near-miss incidents, implementing countermeasures, and sharing information.
• Increase opportunities for hazard prediction training, instill the habits of pre-work hazard prediction and pointing and calling, and eliminate unsafe behaviors.
• Create workplace environments that are not conducive to accidents by systematically implementing risk assessment activities (including for hazardous chemical substances).
• Monitor the risk status of chemicals handled using safety data sheets and other means, and provide thorough safety education.
• Ensure that equipment is consistently turned off during cleaning or when malfunctions occur, alongside the strengthening of measures (such as the use of safety covers) to prevent entanglement in machines.
• Prevent disasters by maintaining and strengthening the 5S methodology—seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, shitsuke (usually translated into English as “sorting, setting in order, shining, standardizing, and sustaining”)—in the workplace.
• Share information about accidents that have occurred within the Nisshin Seifun Group in order to prevent recurrences of similar accidents.
• Increase safety educational opportunities for older workers (in their 50s and older) and ensure that education is carried out thoroughly.
  (Ensure the safety of older workers by promoting the utilization of Age Action 100^*1 and the Age-Friendly Guidelines.^*2)
• Strengthen measures to prevent tripping, trapping and entanglement accidents and cutting and grazing accidents. To prevent tripping accidents in particular, modify equipment and facilities, such as the installation of non-slip sheeting, and the redesign of floors and grating to prevent slipping.
• Provide safety education for foreign employees.

• *1  Compiled by the Japan Industrial Safety and Health Association, Age Action 100 is a set of workplace improvement tools based on a 100-item checklist that is used to review work methods and develop good working environments for older workers.
• *2  The Age-Friendly Guidelines were formulated by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare with the aim of creating safe, pleasant working environments for older workers. They consist of items that require action by businesses and workers.

Traffic accidents

• Continually raise awareness of the importance of anticipatory driving.
• Raise hazard awareness through regular hazard prediction training based on the use of hazard prediction videos and traffic accident news items.
• Ensure that a safe distance is maintained from the vehicle ahead whether moving or stationary (e.g., a gap of at least 2 seconds, depending on the speed of travel, a distance from which the lower edge of the rear bumper of the vehicle ahead is visible when stopped at an intersection).
• Check safety, especially at key locations, including intersections or parking lots (such as by pointing and calling).
• Improve the driving skills of workers under 30 (e.g., instruction by an accompanying supervisor, attendance at an outside driving school).
• Install safety devices, driver support systems, and dashboard camera in commercial vehicles.
• Set schedules and encourage behavior that provide ample time.
• Respond to amendments of the Japanese Road Traffic Act (such as introducing alcohol checks).
• Identify potential hazards (including natural disaster risks) along routes used by workers who commute by car or other means and share hazard information at business sites and in workplaces.
• Provide thorough traffic safety training for young workers aged under 30 and senior workers aged 50 and older.
• Expand multilingual traffic safety guidance for foreign employees.
• We remind people that when crossing roads on foot, even if the light is green, they need to check for vehicles running red lights from left or right. We also raise awareness of the need to enhance their visibility to drivers when walking at night, such as by wearing bright clothing or carrying a light.
• Take steps to prevent self-inflicted accidents.
  For example, we alert people to the ban on engaging in other activities, such as talking or looking at smartphones, while cycling or walking. We also encourage people to look out for hazards, such as gutters and uneven ground, while traveling to and from work on foot or by bicycle.

* Natural disaster risks include road blockages due to landslides, rising river levels, and other consequences of earthquakes, typhoons, and rainstorms, etc.

Measures to prevent minor and major fires

• Regularly inspect equipment, such as heating and cooking apparatus (especially friers), and ensure that surrounding areas are kept clean, including exhaust ducts.
• Ensure that all workers, including staff of outsourcing contractors, are aware of and comply with the smoking rules.
• Strictly limit and control the use of fire through regulations.
• Ensure that hazardous materials, designated combustibles, and waste at construction sites and at other locations are stored and managed in the correct places and using the appropriate methods in accordance with regulatory requirements.

Health management

• Comprehensively implement and improve countermeasures against infectious diseases in the workplace.
  (Examples: Monitoring of CO₂ levels to ensure that ventilation systems are working properly, measures to prevent heat stroke when workers are wearing masks, improvement of hand-washing and disinfection equipment)
• Review occupational health and safety management frameworks.
  (E.g., Notify Labour Standards Inspection Offices of the appointment of sanitation managers, safety managers, industrial physicians, and overall health and safety management supervisors. Ensure that changes to the operations and administration of health and safety committees are properly implemented. Carry out inspection tours by industrial physicians and sanitation managers)
• Reliably track the implementation of health checks, provide health guidance, and make effective use of health check the results (from a health management perspective).
• Operate a stress check system and implement primary prevention and workplace improvement measures.
• Pursue occupational health management on three levels (work management, workplace management, health management).
• Monitor required environmental conditions and eliminate health hazards in working environments (e.g., prevention of heat exhaustion, noise countermeasures, ventilation of areas where hazardous solvents and other chemicals are used).
• Reduce long working hours and total working hours.
• Implement health initiatives (e.g., health seminars).

Targets for FY 2025

Occupational health and safety management

Our initiatives to enhance our health and safety management systems include the establishment of a Health and Safety Management Committee made up of group company directors with production-related responsibilities, under the chairmanship of the ��Ӱֱ��. Director and Managing Executive Officer of the Technology and Engineering Division. We also created a Safety and Hygiene Management Office within the Technology and Engineering Division. The Health and Safety Management Committee meets once a year and reports the results of its deliberations to the Group Management Meeting, which is attended by directors and other officers of ��Ӱֱ��.
The Health and Safety Management Committee plays a central role in the implementation of PDCA cycles relating to occupational health and safety management under the Health and Safety Management Policy. We are particularly aware of the necessity of risk assessments as the “D” stage of the PDCA cycle, and we monitor the implementation of these assessments by group companies in Japan and overseas through audits conducted by the Health and Safety Management Department of ��Ӱֱ��. We also recognize the importance of audits from an external perspective, and we have been using third-party organizations to carry out assessments since fiscal 2016.

Preventing occupational accidents through risk assessments*

We introduced risk assessment activities and expanded them across the Nisshin Seifun Group in fiscal 2006. These activities now form a permanent part of operations at all of our production and research facilities.
In fiscal 2017, we further enhanced our overall activities by introducing chemical substance risk assessments at the relevant business sites. Before starting new projects, including mergers and acquisitions, we implement prior checks of the safety management and occupational safety systems of the target companies, including their responses to directives from labor-related authorities concerning corrective actions.

* A risk assessment is the overall process through which risk levels are assessed and risk tolerances are determined.

Occupational accidents in fiscal 2024

There were 14 non-lost-time accidents and two lost-time accidents in fiscal 2024. The number of lost-time accidents was reduced by four from the previous year’s total of six, but the number of non-lost-time accidents increased by two from the fiscal 2023 total of 12.
The number of trapping and entanglement accidents and the number of tripping accidents were unchanged from the previous fiscal year at three and two respectively. There were 11 other types of accidents, including four resulting from cutting and grazing, and two involving from collisions.
About 60% of accidents occurred when workers were performing routine tasks, and 40% when they were carrying out unexpected and non-routine tasks. We are taking steps to improve working environments and create workplaces in which the potential for accidents is low by ensuring that employees carry out hazard prediction and pointing and calling before starting any work activity, continually collecting information about near-misses, and encouraging risk assessment activities. Other accident reduction initiatives include safety education and countermeasures for older workers, who tend to be more accident-prone because of their declining physical capabilities. There have been no fatal accidents involving employees of the Nisshin Seifun Group for over 30 years.

Scope: Direct or temporary employees (excluding part-timers) working for ��Ӱֱ��., Nisshin Flour Milling Inc., Nisshin Seifun Welna Inc., Nisshin Pharma Inc., Nisshin Engineering Inc., Oriental Yeast Co., Ltd., and NBC Meshtec Inc. (excluding subsidiaries and overseas business sites)