Duopharma Biotech Berhad had been producing its sustainability report for the last four to five years. Group Managing Director Leonard Ariff Abdul Shatar said the report outlined everything the company had been doing to track the safety of its workers, waste management, energy management, etc.
“There’s a lot that we’ve done, but I suppose that’s just us blowing our own horn.
“But in 2019, we were approached by Bursa Malaysia about the possibility of Duopharma Biotech being assessed for potential entrance into the FTSE4Good Index.
“This is Bursa Malaysia’s initiative where you’re assessed, hit a specific benchmark, and go into the FTSE4Good Index. This is because there is a lot of global funding that only invests ethically or sustainably.
“In other words, when they’re looking for shares, they don’t have to look through all the shares in the stock market and audit each one. So, Bursa Malaysia has created a sub-index, FTSE4Good, where all these companies have been assessed from an ESG perspective.
“So, last year Duopharma was for the first time included in the FTSE4Good Index,” shared Leonard Ariff, adding the company’s performance and scoring for the FTSE4Good assessment have improved in 2021.”
He explained the FTSE4Good Index included environmental, social, and governance aspects, covering a broader sustainability segment. This assessment showed Duopharma Biotech’s performance had improved in totality, and the company
had remained on the FTSE4Good Index until now.
“Early this year, we brought in Lloyd’s Register to audit the numbers we claimed in our sustainability report. The sustainability reports are voluntary, but we wanted to ensure that nobody could question the presented numbers.
“So, we brought in Lloyd’s Register to do a third-party verification and also to evaluate where else we could improve. These are some of the activities that we’ve done to ensure that the numbers we’re presenting are credible and the action plans we’re doing are acceptable. It’s something that we’ll continue doing in the future.
“For the second half of 2021, we try to establish our Greenhouse gas (GHG) baseline plus a plan for reduction of the greenhouse impact. By the first quarter of 2022, we want to be in a position to be able to publicly declare what our either nett-zero or carbon-neutral target will be by 2035 or 2040.”
Moving forward, Leonard Ariff shared that the group strived to be a sustainability leader in the country among its peers. This objective was one of the reasons behind the company’s continual improvement of its sustainability initiatives, especially in energy, water and waste management, as Duopharma Biotech is an energy and water-intensive company.
“Through our sustainability efforts,
we also hope to maintain or improve our FTSE4Good Bursa Malaysia Index scoring. Moreover, we hope to be able to align all our sustainability initiatives with the SDGs and the UN’s 10 principles, which will propel us to
be a sustainability leader in the country,” he said.
