Reader Responses

As part of its communication with stakeholders, the Kobe Steel Group gives a questionnaire to readers when it publishes its Sustainability Report every year. In response to our Sustainability Report 2015 we received the following opinions and feedback. In the future we will continue to improve our sustainability reports by incorporating customer feedback into their pages.

Opinions on the Message from the President

Positive Points

Faced with a diverse range of business fields, the report did a good job of using examples to explain business strategies in an easy-to-understand manner.
The greeting from the Kobe Steel Group left a favorable impression.
The writing was compact and easy to read.
I appreciated the leads on the body of the text, which let readers know the subject under discussion.
The inclusion of graphs on items like the Group's outline and sales and the additional explanation of the company's corporate philosophy gave a sense of completeness.
The photograph of the president looked very natural.

Negative Points

The individual paragraphs seemed a little fragmentary.
Management target values weren't included.
The president's sense of values didn't seem personal.
The message didn't refer to the social and business environment.

Feedback on Environmental and Social Contributions

I wish there was a special feature on CO₂ reductions.
I would like to see you do even more to reduce CO₂ emissions through your businesses. I hope you will take a wide approach to reducing environmental impact, not just exploring various technologies, but also pursuing intiatives like forest and biodiversity conservation.
While the business environment continues to grow more severe, judging from this report, it seems as if the Kobe Steel Group will continue to develop.

Feedback on General Articles

Positive Points

I felt a sense of future in the initiatives for a hydrogen-based society.
Elements such as illustrations made the "KOBELCO Contributes to the Realization of a Hydrogen Society" section easy to understand, and gave me strong expections for the company's future contributions to the environment and society.
Using illustrations in the editorial policy at the start made it easy to understand.
The section on medium- to long-term environmental objectives and initiatives/results had a nice sense of volume.
The medium- to long-term environmental objectives and results were displayed concretely.
Splitting up the section on social contributions by stakeholder group made it easy to understand.
The activity highlights were easy to understand.
he "20 Years after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake" section was very good and true to Kobelco.
The feedback from readers was refreshing.
This was my first time learning about the Health and Productivity Stock Selection.

Negative Points

The word count was too high.
I didn't undertand the importance of each activity.
I would have liked to see numerical values displayed for medium- to long-term environmental objectives.
The division between the environmental and social report wasn't very clear.
The connection between the corporate philosophy and environment wasn't clear.

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We will use it to help create a better Sustainability Report.

Editorial Postscript

CSR Committee, Kobe Steel, Ltd.

In creating this report, we made a conscious effort to convey to our wide range of stakeholders the ways in which the Kobe Steel Group contributes to the environment and society through monozukuri (or manufacturing). In the opening special feature, Chairman, President and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki, explained our fiscal 2016-2020 Medium-Term Group Management Plan, which was announced in April 2016. The feature also our stakeholders. In the second special feature we covered Kobe Steeel's contirbutions through rugby and other sports. As an example of CSV (Creating Shared Value) initiatives, we also reported on our Hydrogen Station Comprehensive Test Center and other areas in which we contribute to the realization of a hydrogen-based society. Throughout the report we strove to make Group initiatives as easy to understand as possible through ample use of photographs and graphs.

We will continue to make every effort to use the frank and honest opinions of our readers to better improve our report.

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