Masan Group Corporation received the Community Initiative Award at the 2021Asia Corporate Excellence and Sustainability Awards at a ceremony on November 19.
The awards honour companies and individuals in Asia across a variety of leadership and corporate social responsibility categories, with the Community Initiative Award given to organisations that make great contributions to creating development opportunities for communities through their initiatives and approaches.
The winners are chosen based on growth, human resources, creativity, and brand influence in Asia and their commitment to sustainable development goals.
In its eighth year now, the award saw 154 finalists selected from 420 nominations from 15 countries.
Known not only as the leading consumer goods and retail corporation in Viet Nam with a market capitalisation of US$8 billion, Masan is also an enterprise that considers sustainable development as a strategy to make a meaningful contribution to the development of communities.
In its operations, Masan's purpose has always been to improve the material and spiritual lives of Vietnamese consumers.
It also focuses on achieving sustainable development norms across its production and business activities, including innovation in products and processing, human resource sustainability, environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance.
In business fields that have an impact on the environment such as mining, livestock farming and manufacturing, appropriate safeguard plans are in place right from the beginning of each project.
Its Law and Compliance Department and Safety, Health and Environment Department are responsible for monitoring compliance with environmental regulations nationwide and closely monitoring the status of environmental laws and regulations.
Masan's factories and member companies across the country all comply with national and local laws and regulations on the environment, implementing measures to assess, monitor and protect the environment, inspecting factory machinery and equipment and fire safety, and closely coordinating with state agencies for periodically checking and reporting.
For instance, Masan Consumer Holdings (a subsidiary of Masan) has built modern wastewater treatment plants designed by a Dutch partner at its factories in Binh Duong, Hai Duong and Nghe An provinces.
All wastewater treatment quality test results meet class A standards, the highest in Viet Nam, and ISO 14001 standards on environmental management.
In Binh Duong, Masan Consumer is also one of the pioneers in making the wastewater treatment process transparent through the installation of an automatic wastewater monitoring system that reports directly and continuously to the province Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
WinMart+ supermarket sells a wide range of essential products and adopts strict pandemic prevention measures to ensure the safety of both shoppers and its staff. — Photo courtesy of Masan
Masan's sustainability initiatives focus on bringing value to society and contributing to the local community. It currently has the largest retail chain in the country with nearly 2,500 WinMart/WinMart+ stores and supermarkets and a number of factories producing essential items such as food, beverages and meat and meat products all over Viet Nam.
With consumer products and retail services, the group constantly researches into and begins trends that bring the utmost convenience to customers.
In 2020, it paid VND5 trillion ($219.95 million) in taxes and earmarked more than VND30 billion ($1.32 million) for various community activities.
In 2021, when the fourth outbreak of the COVID-19 caused great socio-economic difficulty, it contributed over VND270 billion to epidemic prevention and control, including through supporting the Government's COVID-19 Vaccine Fund and donating medical equipment to hospitals and essential products and cash to frontline forces fighting the epidemic.
A Masan Group spokesperson said: “Supporting community development and implementing social responsibility have been among the sustainable development goals of Masan Group since the very beginning of its establishment.
“As the leading consumer goods and retail corporation that has a profound effect on tens of millions of consumers, Masan believes in 'Doing well by doing good.’
“Community initiatives play a crucial role every day in realising our mission of uplifting the material and spiritual lives of 100 million Vietnamese consumers.”
Winning the Asia Corporate Excellence and Sustainability Awards, one of the most sought after accolades in Asia, is a driving force for Masan Group to continue to create quality products and services, grow its business and contribute to the general development of society. VNS