Asahi Group’s 2025 sustainability report highlights its commitments to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
The company is reshaping its supply chain and moving towards more renewable energy sourcing, as well as to more sustainable packaging.
Asahi’s short term targets include a 40% cut in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2025, and a 70% reduction by 2030, as well as cutting Scope 3 emissions by 30% by 2030.
To do this, the company will be working closely with suppliers to ensure traceable sustainability throughout its supply chain.
Packaging strategy and supplier collaboration
Packaging is a central part of Asahi’s supply chain strategy. By 2030, the company says all containers and secondary packaging will be reusable or fully recyclable and primarily made from recycled content.
To achieve this, Asahi aims to increase the recycled content of glass bottles and aluminium cans to more than 50%, and to use 30% recycled material in PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles by 2025.
Asahi also plans to cut overall plastic use by 25% in its European operations by 2030, again using 2019 as a baseline.
The company has seen strong growth in its label-free bottle sales, which rose by 117% year on year in 2023.
These bottles use no plastic labels, making them easier to recycle and reducing material inputs.
Asahi works with suppliers and consumers to support its packaging goals, aiming for materials with a lower environmental burden.
These efforts form part of a circular economy approach — a model focused on minimising waste and keeping materials in use.
Supply chain energy targets
Asahi is also transitioning its energy use to renewable sources.
It plans to source 100% of purchased electricity for production sites from renewables by the end of 2025.
Its breweries in Europe and Australia are leading this push and are on track to reach full carbon neutrality by 2030.
In addition to switching energy sources, the company is applying energy efficiency measures across its operations, including installing more efficient machinery and tracking consumption to identify possible reductions.
Digital platforms are being rolled out to collect and compare sustainability data across regions.
These systems give Asahi a clearer view of its supply chain performance and allow for common measurement methods and progress tracking across all business units.
In a joint statement in the report, Asahi Chief Executive Officer Atsushi Katsuki and Chief Sustainability Officer Drahomira Mandikova say: “We are currently focusing on finalising and activating all our sustainability roadmaps, building One Asahi global capabilities through common methodology and digital sustainability platforms that compile and leverage regional data and accelerating collaborative engagement with different partners, suppliers and companies.
“This requires an innate desire to cooperate in non-hierarchical partnership with wide-ranging stakeholders on a sweeping scale, which the Asahi Group is well placed to do.
“Our employees around the world share the curiosity and drive of our senior management that fiercely advocate collaborative sustainability.”
Water stewardship
Water is essential to Asahi’s production processes, particularly in brewing and bottling. The company is working to improve water use across its operations, with measures such as better tracking, reuse systems and equipment changes.
Its soft drinks business now reuses water from cleaning beverage cans and PET bottles, and has adjusted machines to reduce flow rates and total water consumption. The company sees its water efficiency work not just as environmental responsibility, but also a supply resilience measure.
Asahi continues to rely on collaboration across its value chain to hit long-term sustainability targets and sees this integrated approach as essential to achieving emissions reductions and maintaining supply stability.