This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 27, 2023 - December 3, 2023

The main goal of ESG has to be spending more time on ‘doing’ better instead of spending [most of our resources] on trying to ‘investigate or report’ better.” - Zarauza

Malaysian Pacific Industries Bhd (MPI) won gold in the technology sector at The Edge Malaysia ESG Awards 2023. This marks the second year in a row it took home the trophy.

“We see [this second win] as a continuing recognition of our sound business practices,” says group managing director Manuel Zarauza. “We take pride in consistency and continuous improvement, and this is a testament to the efforts being put in by our entire team.”

These efforts include promoting “the requisite governance, mind set and culture required to drive [the ESG agenda, and] constantly reviewing and enhancing our processes to ensure we have the right training and know-how to pursue the right priorities, with the right measures in place to track progress and course-correct when needed”.

Zarauza adds that the company needs to continuously improve, review and enhance its processes to adapt to the dynamics of the fast-changing ESG landscape.

New regulations, standards, guidelines and practices are introduced every year. To ensure they have the necessary knowledge and technical understanding of these topics, MPI employees continuously participate in training sessions and conferences, says Zarauza.

“We try to engage in dialogues with our key customers to understand their evolving requirements on this front so that we can best prepare ourselves to support [our customers] in achieving their own sustainability goals,” he explains.

Despite their best efforts, Zarauza acknowledges that some of the challenges of adopting the new standards and requirements still persist.

This has done little to hinder MPI’s sustainability efforts, however, as Zarauza explains that MPI views sustainability as a chance for it to be better and improve itself consistently.

“In that respect, [MPI] has certainly been able to set up our sustainability programme with the right processes, personnel and governance to focus on continuous improvement in every aspect,” says Zarauza. “This is reflected in the fact that we’re among the selected few semiconductor companies to feature in the FTSE4Good Index for two years in a row now.”

MPI has also achieved a higher rating on the climate change theme under FTSE’s annual assessment, and maintained its efforts in workforce diversity, increasing the percentage of women in its workforce to 51%.

Ultimately, Zarauza believes a simplification of the standards, guidelines and frameworks to implement ESG practices is needed. “There are too many of those, leading to a lot of confusion and inefficiencies in execution,” he explains.

“The main goal of ESG has to be spending more time on ‘doing’ better instead of spending [most of our resources] on trying to ‘investigate or report’ better.” He adds that there is a risk of not seeing the forest for the trees, which is especially true in these challenging market conditions that organisations are facing, with limited resources at their disposal.

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