The brief

For its 2019 calendar year Sustainability Report Oji Fibre Solutions (OFS) wanted to conduct a substantial deep and wide materiality assessment through interviews with internal and external stakeholders and research into reported and published issues and trends relating to its operational areas – pulp, paper, packaging, recycling and shipping.

This assessment would provide a baseline for directing the content of the sustainability report as well as informing the company’s sustainability strategy.

The Wright approach

OFS in-house sustainability managers and Wright Communications account directors Richard Gordon and Tim Marshall agreed on a list of nine internal stakeholders plus about 20 external stakeholders including customers, suppliers, local communities, local iwi, local Government and NGOs.

Richard and Tim interviewed these stakeholders to explore issues and opportunities for OFS and for external stakeholder organisations in the immediate future and over the next three to five years.

We also conducted desktop research to assess broader market issues, economic forecasts, and global mega trends as they relate to sustainability issues and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We prepared a competitor analysis from desktop research supplemented with input from external market expertise to ascertain the market position, strengths, opportunities, threats, and sustainability progress of OFS’ key competitors.

Finally, OFS provided its Risk Register that covers climate change, digital, environment, finance, legal and regulatory, people, disaster, policy, reputation, and safety risks to inform the materiality assessment.

Outcome

Drawing on these four inputs – the stakeholder interviews, global mega trends, competitor analysis and risk register – we prepared a Materiality Assessment Report including a materiality matrix highlighting the top 12 material issues for OFS with supporting commentary and insights.

This report informed the development of OFS Sustainability Report – the company’s main external communications tool. Wright Communications account directors Catherine Bright and Ron Murray played a major hand in the writing and editing of this report which was proudly promoted to the company’s stakeholders by OFS CEO Jon Ryder.