The hot wind of ESG is roaring towards everyone.
Back in 2004, the United Nations Global Compact first proposed the concept of ESG in the report "Who Cares Win". It is an acronym for three English words – Environmental, Social and Governance, which represents an investment philosophy and corporate evaluation criteria that focus on the environmental, social and governance performance of enterprises rather than their financial performance.
To put it more bluntly, a truly good company should not only be able to make money, but also have the elements of sustainable development.
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A "must-answer question"
The birth of the concept of ESG can be traced back to ethical investing in the early 18th century.
The Methodist Church at the time called on its followers not to let their businesses harm their neighbors. For example, they do not allow their followers to run chemical and tanning businesses because they may pollute the surrounding environment and communities.
In 1992, the United Nations proposed Agenda 21, which was the beginning of the world's first attention to sustainable economic development. In 2004, the United Nations and a number of large financial institutions formally established an ESG theoretical framework.
The wind of ESG soon reached China as well. In 2006, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued the Guidelines on Social Responsibility of Listed Companies to introduce this concept to the Chinese market. The following year was 2007. Sunshine Development (000671) released its first ESG report in mainland China.
According to statistics from research institutions, as of July 2023, 347 of the 450 A-share listed central state-owned enterprises have disclosed ESG/social responsibility reports, with a disclosure rate of 80%. At the same time, leading companies in all walks of life have successively released their own ESG reports.
The latest news is that on April 12, 2024, the three major stock exchanges in Shanghai, Shenzhen and North China officially issued the "Guidelines for Sustainability Reporting of Listed Companies" to guide and regulate listed companies to publish "Sustainability Reports" or "Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Reports", further in line with international standards.
For Chinese companies, ESG has become a "must-answer question".
Faced with such a question, on April 26, Mindray Medical, a leading medical device company, released its 2023 annual sustainability report and gave its own answer.
The author notes that this is Mindray's sixth sustainability report (the 2018-2020 report is called the Social Responsibility Report). As an industry leader, it is also an early adopter of sustainable development.
Looking through this report, it discloses in detail the company's practices and achievements in the fields of environmental, social, and corporate governance in 2023.
The most intuitive manifestation is that in 2023, Mindray Medical won multiple honors in the field of sustainable development. For example, the Group's MSCI ESG rating jumped to AA, won the EcoVadis 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Silver Medal, and ranked in the top 10 of the "China ESG Listed Companies Pioneer 100 List".
In terms of industrial chain collaboration, in 2023, Mindray will build a quality and risk management system covering the entire product life cycle with an integrated supply chain system as the core, so as to achieve end-to-end collaborative and efficient management of the business chain. In addition, the company has accepted a total of 132 quality management system audits from government regulatory agencies and external auditors, with a 100% pass rate. The quality management system certification covers 100% of all final product production sites.
In terms of green development, Mindray Medical's Shenzhen Guangming Production Plant has made technological breakthroughs in boiler condensate reuse and bottle wash water reuse, saving 54,450 m³ of fresh water annually. Mindray has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 compared to a 2021 baseline. In 2023, the carbon emission intensity will be reduced by 8.51% compared with 2022.
In the field of rural revitalization, some of the plants in Dangshan Mindray Medical Technology Industrial Park have been completed and accepted, and some employees who have completed training have started production operations. At the same time, the construction of the new campus of Dangshan Middle School, which was built with a personal investment of 1 billion yuan by Li Xiting, chairman of Mindray Medical, officially started......
Looking at this report, the author can't help but ponder: how did Mindray's sustainable development path come about?
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"Be where it's needed most"
The answer can be found in action.
The author took a look at the 2023 annual sustainability report, Mindray Medical has as many as 22 ESG issues, covering product quality and safety, corporate governance, employee training and development, innovative smart healthcare, green operation, rural revitalization, inclusive medical care and other fields.
For the general public, we may not know much about the topic of business, but we are familiar with one core word that runs through this report - social responsibility.
At 23:59 on December 18, 2023, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake occurred in Jishishan County, Linxia Prefecture, Gansu Province, with an epicenter depth of 10 kilometers. The earthquake caused more than 100 casualties in Gansu and Qinghai.
On December 19, Mindray immediately organized an emergency medical equipment support team to go to the disaster area with multiple mobile DR equipment to assist local medical institutions in the treatment of the wounded.
At the same time, Mindray Medical urgently cooperated with public welfare organizations to donate medical equipment worth 3 million yuan to the disaster area. The donated equipment includes monitors, ventilators, defibrillators and other products to provide equipment support for medical rescue in disaster areas in a timely manner.
The author notes that this is not the first time that Mindray has provided support to the disaster area.
Back on April 14, 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Yushu, Qinghai, causing serious casualties and property damage. At that time, Mindray Medical raised more than 4.7 million yuan to express its care and blessings to the victims of the Yushu earthquake.
This is not the first time Mindray has rushed to the front line of the disaster. In July 2021, when Henan was hit by a heavy rainstorm, Mindray's Zhengzhou service team was on duty 24 hours a day, working with all service partners in Henan to ensure the smooth operation of hospital equipment. In Anyang, the Mindray service team braved the rain and walked to the hospital for nearly two hours to solve the problem of critical ICU equipment in a timely manner.
Even more thrilling is during the pandemic. At the beginning of the epidemic in January 2020, the Mindray team took the initiative to contact medical institutions and arranged for more than 200 engineers to inspect more than 20,000 devices in Hubei Province.
I still remember that on the second day of the Lunar New Year that year, Mindray urgently summoned more than 1,400 employees to return to work, and completed the delivery of urgently needed equipment as soon as possible, delivered more than 3,000 sets of key equipment simultaneously with Wuhan Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals, and donated a total of more than 33 million yuan of medical equipment to designated medical institutions in Hubei. As of mid-May 2020, Mindray has delivered more than 100,000 units of medical equipment to the country, making great contributions to the fight against the epidemic.
From 2007 to 2009, Mindray donated medical devices worth RMB 22.59 million to township health centers in Gansu, Jilin, Anhui, Guangdong and other provinces. In Xinjiang, Mindray's equipment has been extended all the way to Kashgar, the westernmost part of the motherland, and has spread to medical institutions in various prefectures and cities in the autonomous region; in Tibet, Mindray's portable ultrasound has helped several expert teams screen local children for congenital heart disease; and in the northwest region, Mindray has cooperated with the local health bureaus in Gansu, Qingdao, and Ningbo to hold ultrasound system training classes to improve the ultrasound diagnosis skills of grassroots doctors.
Mindray also took the charity abroad for its charity efforts. Over the years, Mindray has actively cooperated with a number of non-profit medical institutions around the world to donate medical equipment, provide medical training, support free health clinics, and provide medical assistance across borders.
Mindray's footprint often appears where it is most needed.
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Science and technology "help the needy"
Looking deeper, Mindray's public welfare road has a stronger scientific and technological background.
Founded in 1991, Mindray has been committed to the R&D and manufacturing of clinical medical devices, covering three major fields: life information and support, in vitro diagnostics, and medical imaging.
It can be said that the past 30 years have been 30 years since Mindray Medical grew up, and it is also 30 years since the rise of China's medical devices!
Previously, Medical Design and Outsourcing, an authoritative third-party website for medical devices, released a list of the top 100 global medical device companies. With its FY2022 revenue figures, Mindray ranks among the top 30 in the industry.
In the 2023 Newsweek Top 100 Hospitals in the World, Mindray has covered 80 hospitals. China's intelligent manufacturing has been competing with international first-line medical device companies.
As early as 2000, Mindray started the process of internationalization. To date, Mindray has set up 62 overseas subsidiaries and 5 overseas R&D centers in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions, established a global R&D, marketing and service network, and its international business revenue has exceeded 13.5 billion yuan.
Behind these achievements, Mindray Medical is inseparable from its profound "internal strength". According to the financial report, in the past few years, Mindray Medical has invested about 10% of its revenue in R&D. As of the end of 2023, Mindray has applied for a total of 10,090 patents, including 7,222 invention patents, and 4,767 authorized patents, including 2,226 invention patents.
It is precisely for this reason that Mindray attaches great importance to the power of science and technology in the process of doing public welfare.
For example, in June 2020, Li Xiting, chairman of Mindray Medical, personally donated 106.8 million yuan to USTC and established the "Li Xiting Fund", which focuses on the construction of the School of Physics and the introduction and training of high-end talents to USTC's high-end science and technology projects. It is worth mentioning that this donation is the largest single donation received by USTC since its establishment.
In Dangshan County, Anhui Province, Li Xiting and Mindray Medical have introduced medical device industry clusters through the construction of a science and technology industrial park to help upgrade local industries. In addition, Li Xiting also personally donated 1 billion yuan to build a new campus for Dangshan Middle School.
Over the years, Mindray has spared no effort to promote public defibrillation programs, donate AED equipment, and conduct first aid training courses to improve the awareness and skills of the whole population.
By the end of 2023, Mindray had donated more than 1,000 AED devices to its partners, and its AED devices had successfully treated a total of 218 patients with cardiac arrest in public places in China. In addition, from 2021 to 2023 alone, Mindray directly or indirectly promoted a total of 1.6 million people to participate in first aid training.
Mindray understands that material support is short-term after all, and the root support lies in intellectual support. It is precisely for this reason that Mindray has invested heavily in education and medical popularization, and has always cherished the original intention of "caring for life with technology".
The temperament of "science and engineering", the feelings of "humanities". In this unique way, Mindray Medical interprets what it means to be a "technology-based public welfare".
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End
"It's a small step for me personally, but it's a giant leap for all of humanity. ”
On July 21, 1969, Armstrong, who had successfully landed on the moon, uttered these words.
In space exploration, the pace of human beings has not stopped. The same is true for the exploration of public welfare. From the government-led and social support model in the 1.0 era, to the non-governmental philanthropy in the 2.0 era, to the Internet philanthropy in the 3.0 era, from the Hope Project to individual fundraising to online mutual aid, China's philanthropy has been moving forward. Today's ESG trend is also a microcosm of this.
Looking back at the past public welfare process, it is more at the level of "donation", donating money and materials can solve temporary problems, but it does not touch the essence. Mindray's public welfare practice has opened up a new way of thinking for us.
For health and poverty alleviation, Mindray not only donated top-notch medical equipment, but also carried out free clinics and training, so that the world's leading medical equipment and technology can benefit the poor and the region.
To support education, Mindray not only donated to Hope Primary School, but also to top scientific research institutions to focus on high-end talent training and high-tech research and development.
For rural revitalization, Mindray not only donated money and materials, but also introduced a science and technology industrial park to promote the transformation of the local economy by expanding the industry and alleviate poverty from the roots......
This may be a small step for a company, but it is already a big leap for China's philanthropy.