Hemas Holdings: A Comprehensive First Mandatory Disclosure — With Two Deferrals in Plain Sight

For the top-100 cohort, FY2025/26 is the first report that must address SLFRS S1 and S2 rather than voluntary ambition. That raises the bar from “did the company say something about sustainability?” to “did it disclose what the standard requires, in a form an analyst can check?” Hemas clears most of that bar. Its Integrated Annual Report 2025/26 reports in accordance with the GRI Standards, aligns its investor-facing disclosures with SLFRS S1 and S2, includes a formal section on sustainability-related financial disclosures with its own assurance opinion, and quantifies its Scope 1 and 2 footprint against a stated methodology and base year. Where it falls short of S2 — scenario analysis and full Scope 3 — it says so, names the relief it is relying on, and dates the catch-up. That combination is what separates a genuine early adopter from a company that files to be seen filing.

This profile assesses the quality of the disclosure — whether the report meets the requirements of SLFRS S1 and S2 — not Hemas’s underlying sustainability performance, which no published report can certify. It is based on the FY2025/26 Integrated Annual Report and the independent assurance reports published alongside it. Every finding below concerns what the report does and does not say.

Hemas Holdings PLC is a diversified Sri Lankan group organised into four segments: healthcare and pharmaceuticals (its largest, spanning manufacturing, distribution and hospitals); consumer brands (personal and home care, including operations in Bangladesh); mobility and logistics (shipping, aviation and travel); and a learning segment. The Group reported revenue of Rs. 127.4 bn and profit after tax of Rs. 9.3 bn for FY2025/26, with roughly 5,171 employees across its Sri Lankan operations (p.5). Its scale across essential consumer and healthcare categories makes its disclosure choices matter: the group touches supply chains, energy use and communities well beyond its own factory gates.

The report is the strongest part of the story. Hemas states that it has reported in accordance with the GRI Standards for the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 — the fuller of GRI’s two claim levels — and has aligned its investor-focused disclosures with SLFRS S1 and S2, on a double-materiality basis that separates impact materiality from the sustainability-related risks and opportunities (SRROs) that arise from it (p.5–6, p.83). Materiality is not merely asserted: financial impacts are tested against a threshold defined as a percentage of the Group’s three-year average EBIT, with external consultants engaged to refresh the assessment (p.108).

Assurance is present and independent, but limited. Ernst & Young provides limited assurance (under SLSAE 3000 Revised) over both the GRI Universal Standards information and the SLFRS-aligned sustainability disclosures (p.103, p.237), separate from its audit of the financial statements (p.150). Limited assurance is a meaningful step — most Sri Lankan sustainability data carries none — but it is not the reasonable-assurance level that gives a figure audit-grade weight. Readers should hold the numbers accordingly.

Hemas quantifies its operational carbon footprint. In FY2025/26, Scope 1 emissions were 2,836 MT CO₂e and Scope 2 (location-based) 11,786 MT CO₂e, for a combined total of 14,622 MT, calculated using the GHG Protocol and IPCC/IGES emission factors updated to AR6, against a 2019 base year (p.5, p.44). Total energy consumption was 148,507 GJ, with an intensity of 1.2 GJ per Rs. mn of revenue, of which 7% was drawn from renewables after more than Rs. 746 mn of solar investment (p.42–43). Water withdrawal was 201 ML (p.5).

On Scope 3, the report goes beyond what the standard currently requires and is transparent about the gap. It discloses 14,415 MT CO₂e for selected categories — employee commuting, business travel, waste generated in operations, and fuel- and energy-related activities — after evaluating all fifteen GHG Protocol categories for relevance (p.44). At the same time, in its formal SLFRS S2 statements, it explicitly defers full Scope 3 disclosure for two years under the transitional relief, so the partial figure is a voluntary down-payment rather than a compliant Scope 3 account (p.109). The targets are energy-based: a 25% reduction in energy consumption by 2030 against a 2018 base year (p.41). There is no absolute Group emissions target and no net-zero commitment — a real gap the report does not paper over.

The workforce disclosures are quantified and reasonably candid. Of 5,171 Sri Lankan employees, 1,626 (about 31%) are women (p.5, p.34), and average training reached 14.2 hours per employee, up from 9.7 the prior year (p.5). On safety, the Group recorded 53 recordable injuries for the year (a rate of 1.02 per 100), with zero fatalities and zero high-consequence injuries (p.36) — the kind of detail that signals the numbers are being counted rather than curated. Community investment totalled Rs. 67 mn, channelled largely through the Hemas Outreach Foundation and health and women’s-empowerment programmes (p.22). No fixed percentage-of-profit CSR commitment is stated.

The board comprises eight directors as at 31 March 2026 — four Independent Non-Executive, three Non-Executive and one Executive — a 50% independent board chaired by an Independent Non-Executive Director, with the Group CEO the sole executive (p.89). The Esufally family, the controlling shareholder, is represented among the non-executive directors, a fact that is disclosed rather than obscured. On climate specifically, the board delegated sustainability oversight during the year to the Board Audit Committee, which reviews SRROs, targets and performance, while implementation runs through the Board of Management under the Group CEO. Emissions and energy KPIs are reviewed quarterly (p.82–83). Four board sub-committees — Audit, HR & Remuneration, Related Party Transactions Review, and Nominations & Governance — complete the structure.

ESGNexus grades disclosure completeness against a published, equal-weighted, page-referenced checklist of seven criteria drawn from SLFRS S1 and S2 (Disclosure Grading Methodology v1.0). We assess what the report does and does not disclose — not the company’s underlying performance. Each criterion is scored Present (1), Partial (0.5) or Absent (0), or N/A where it genuinely does not apply. The full checklist below is reproducible: the same report and this rubric should yield the same result.

Alongside the checklist, we characterise the disclosure across four qualitative dimensions — completeness, comparability, credibility and candour — each rated against cited evidence. These dimensions capture nuances the checklist score does not.

Where it leads: integration and honesty. This is not a CSR chapter bolted onto an annual report; sustainability runs through the MD&A and culminates in a formal section on SLFRS S1/S2 statements, which carries its own assurance opinion. The Group discloses a quantified Scope 1 and 2 footprint with a clear methodology and base year, tests materiality against a numeric EBIT threshold, and subjects the sustainability data to external review by EY. Most tellingly, it discloses the things that make a company look less finished: that it has not run scenario analysis, that its Scope 3 account is partial, and that prior-year figures were restated. That candour is the single most reassuring feature of the report.

Where it lags: the forward-looking half of climate risk. The two deferrals are permitted, but they are also the two disclosures an investor most needs to price transition risk. Without climate scenario analysis, there is no evidence that the Group has stress-tested its healthcare, consumer and logistics businesses against a warming or decarbonising world; without full Scope 3, the 14,622 MT operational figure understates a footprint whose weight almost certainly lies in purchased goods and distribution. And the absence of any absolute emissions or net-zero target means the energy-efficiency goal, real as it is, is not yet anchored to a decarbonisation trajectory. Relief clauses expire: FY2027/28 is when this report’s promises come due, and when the next profile will test them.

For an investor, Hemas is a company whose disclosures you can largely trust, precisely because it tells you where they stop. Read the limited-assurance scope and the two deferrals as the live items; watch FY2027/28 for scenario analysis, full Scope 3, and — the disclosure the report most conspicuously lacks — an absolute emissions target. For a peer preparing its own first mandatory report, Hemas is a usable template for how to defer credibly: name the relief, date the catch-up, and disclose a voluntary partial figure in the meantime rather than remain silent. For the regulator, it is evidence that the transitional reliefs are doing what they were designed to do — letting serious reporters phase in the hardest disclosures without either faking them or failing to file.