ITOCHU Corporation (Headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced that on February 16, 2026, it became the first trading company to receive the Gold Prize (Minister of the Environment Award), the highest award in the Environmentally Sustainable Company Category, at the 7th ESG Finance Awards Japan*.
To date, ITOCHU has received the Silver Prize once and the Bronze Prize four times in the same category, making this its sixth award in total.
The ESG Finance Awards Japan were established by the Ministry of the Environment in FY 2019 with the aim of promoting and expanding ESG finance. The awards recognize and commend institutional investors, financial institutions, intermediaries and companies that practice sustainable management and are actively engaged in ESG finance, and seek to widely share the details of such initiatives with society as a whole.
In conferring the Gold Prize (Minister of the Environment Award) this time, the judges highly evaluated ITOCHU’s efforts as a general trading company to comprehensively identify environmental risks and opportunities, and to realize capital-efficient management aligned with its growth strategy as well as robust sustainability governance. In addition, ITOCHU’s initiatives to address natural capital risks in its natural rubber operations were recognized as distinctive efforts.

As a general trading company with a diverse range of business domains and supply chains, ITOCHU was highly commended for comprehensively identifying environmental risks and opportunities and aligning them with its growth strategy at a time when high growth is required to support capital-efficient management at global standards. The leadership demonstrated by executive officer in pursuing company-wide synergies, together with the establishment of robust sustainability governance that enables long-term decision-making, serves as a benchmark for other companies. It was also particularly noted that the company’s pioneering efforts on natural capital within its non-resource businesses have contributed to assessing and verifying the resilience of its natural rubber operations, resulting in the award of the Gold Prize.

ITOCHU has adopted “The Brand-New Deal: Profit opportunities are shifting downstream,” as its basic management policy, and will continue to promote “Contributing to and Strengthening Initiatives toward the SDGs” by listening closely to the voices of all stakeholders, including markets, society and consumers.