Client Name

Ismail Industries Limited

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Nauman J. Amin

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Investment Decision Making

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

This project falls under the Investment Decision Making thought leadership area. IFRS S1 and S2 are fundamentally investor-focused standards — their core purpose is to improve the quality, comparability, and decision-usefulness of sustainability-related financial information available to capital providers. The relevance to investment decision making is direct: as institutional investors with ESG mandates expand their presence in emerging markets, the quality and structure of a company's sustainability reporting directly influences its cost of capital, access to green financing, and valuation multiples.

This project addresses a specific information asymmetry in Pakistan's capital markets: listed FMCG companies like IIL face material sustainability and climate-related risks, but investors and lenders currently lack the structured, standardised disclosures needed to assess those risks. By helping IIL build an IFRS S1/S2-aligned disclosure framework — through gap analysis, illustrative disclosures, and a regional benchmarking report — this project contributes directly to reducing that information gap and improving the quality of information available to capital providers. The methodology is generalisable to any listed Pakistani company navigating the voluntary-to-mandatory IFRS S1/S2 transition, giving the work implications beyond the immediate engagement. The project also has meaningful implications for Corporate Governance, particularly in structuring board-level accountability for climate risk.

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 13: Climate Action

Aligned SDGs Justification

This project aligns with SDG 13 (Climate Action) by helping Ismail Industries Limited structure its climate-related disclosures in line with IFRS S2, the global standard for corporate climate risk reporting. Effective climate action at the corporate level begins with accurate identification, classification, and communication of climate risks — which is precisely what this project addresses. Through the gap analysis, we identified that IIL faces material physical climate risks (flooding, extreme heat, water scarcity) and transition risks (plastic regulations, energy cost volatility) that are not currently disclosed in a structured, investor-legible format. The illustrative disclosures, climate risk classification framework, and phased roadmap developed in this project provide IIL with a concrete path toward transparent climate risk communication. When companies disclose climate risks clearly and consistently, capital can be directed more effectively toward climate-resilient business models — which is the corporate-level mechanism through which SDG 13 is advanced. The benchmarking work, drawing on regional peers from India and Sri Lanka, also demonstrates that structured climate disclosure is achievable in emerging market FMCG contexts, contributing to broader institutional capacity building for climate action in Pakistan's corporate sector.

NDA

No

Abstract

This Experiential Learning Project (ELP) was undertaken in collaboration with Ismail Industries Limited (IIL), which is one of Pakistan's leading FMCG manufacturers. The objective of this project was to assess how the company's current sustainability and corporate reporting practices align with the global standards, which are IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 Sustainability Disclosure Standards. The project was carried out over approximately four to five months by a team of three final-year BS Accounting and Finance students from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, under the supervision of Dr. Nauman Amin (Faculty Advisor) and Mr. Ahmed Ali (Company Supervisor).

There were 3 main phases of this project:

(i) Diagnosis Phase which involved review of IIL's Annual Report 2025 and initial discussions with company representatives

(ii) Analysis Phase where gap analysis was done against the four pillars of IFRS S1 and S2, namely - Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, and Metrics & Targets (iii) Drafting Phase in which example disclosures and benchmarking reports.

After thorough review, it was found out that IIL demonstrates strong operational commitment to sustainability, mainly through solar energy installations, biomass fuel usage, a GreenPET recycling initiative, and supply chain resilience efforts, but its formal reporting falls considerably short of IFRS S1 and S2 requirements. To be specific, gaps include the absence of a names within the organization that are responsible for governance of sustainability, no classification of climate risks as physical versus transitional, no quantitative environmental metrics such as Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, and no linkage between sustainability factors and financial statement line items.

The project produced four primary deliverables:

(i) Gap Analysis,

(ii) IFRS S1 and S2-aligned sample disclosures,

(iii) a regional benchmarking report comparing IIL with similar companies in the same region Britannia Industries Limited (India) and Convenience Foods Lanka PLC (Sri Lanka)

(iv) a roadmap for enhancing IIL's sustainability reporting capabilities.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

Download

Share

COinS