Yamaha Motor: Sustainable Supply Chains

The Japanese mobility manufacturer, Yamaha Motors, best known for its motorcycles, is putting sustainability efforts at the heart of its procurement and supply chain operations.

Driving towards a more sustainable future

Its approach, outlined as part of its green procurement documents, stresses conducting its corporate activities with concern for the environment and communities whilst fulfilling social responsibility with honesty and sincerity.

It aims to have a net-zero CO2 emission for the whole product lifecycle, with targets in its plan such as a 90% or more reduction from the use of products by people compared to 2010, plus reducing CO2 emissions generated in the operation of production and in its logistics.

Yamaha Motor, in line with its Yamaha Motor Group Environmental Plan 2050, is working towards being carbon neutral throughout all of its supply chains, including the company’s business activities by 2050.

On the company’s website, Yoshihiro Hidaka, President, Chief Executive Officer and Representative Director at Yamaha Motor, outlined the top message on sustainability: “The Yamaha Motor Group’s corporate mission is to be a ‘Kando* Creating Company – Offering new excitement and a more fulfilling life for people all over the world,’ and we operate under three management principles.

"‘Creating value that surpasses customer expectations, establishing a corporate environment that fosters self-esteem and fulfilling social responsibilities globally. Based on this corporate philosophy, we have constantly pursued new challenges, leading to the opening of new markets, the creation of unique products and the development of a wide range of businesses. Our company as it exists today was built on this history.’”

As the company works towards achieving this goal and eventually switching to 100% sustainable materials, Yamaha Motor is pushing to adopt and further expand its use of green and recycled materials.

Partnerships empowering sustainability efforts

Earlier this year, Yamaha Motor and its US subsidiary, Yamaha Motor Corporation, announced a new partnership with Shippeo to ease its global supply chain challenges.

With the help of Shippeo's global network, Yamaha Japan will gain complete coverage of all ocean containers transporting its goods. This includes real-time visibility into all ocean carriers, terminals, ports and ships, along with predictive arrival estimates.

Yamaha Motor Group has set the prevention of global warming as its critical environmental issue. To prevent global warming, it believes it is vital to work on it by looking through the whole lifecycle. It asks business partners to promote preventive activities for global warming throughout its entire business via:

• Reduction of energy consumption over the whole lifecycle, including manufacturing and transportation of supplied goods.
• Improvement of energy consumption efficiency for supplied goods themselves.
• Active utilisation of recyclable energy.

Low-carbon packaging

Yamaha Motor Co. has announced another way it will reduce its carbon footprint through the use of low-carbon, recycled steel sheets produced in electric furnaces as a raw material for the packaging frames used to ship motorcycles.

It will be gradually expanding the scope of use of the material going forward.

By making this move, Yamaha marks the first time in Japan that steel sheets from electric furnaces have been used for packaging frames for motorcycles (according to Yamaha Motor research as of July 2024).

These steel sheets are recycled materials produced by melting scrap iron in an electric furnace and then rolling it into sheets.

Compared to conventional materials made from iron ore and coke that are smelted in a blast furnace, these materials produce significantly less CO2 during their production, according to Yamaha when it announced the move.

Starting in October 2024, Yamaha Motor will begin to use these new recycled steel sheets from Tokyo Steel for its packaging frames for motorcycle shipments, with plans to gradually expand the scope of their use in stages going forward, thereby increasing the ratio of recycled materials used in its packaging frames.

The steel is made primarily from scrap iron acquired from demolished buildings, discarded home appliances and scrapped automobiles.

Its material characteristics, quality and suitability for use in packaging frames have been tried and proven thanks to collaborative efforts between Tokyo Steel and Yamaha Motor.

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