Safety performance
Our target is zero injuries or accidents for all our locations for both employees and contractors.
Here you'll find our latest annual safety results, as set out in our 2011 Annual Report. The figures are for calendar year 2010.
Measuring safety performance
In line with the international OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) standards, we use two key measures of safety performance:
- Recordable incident rate: the number of injuries requiring treatment beyond first aid, per 200,000 hours
- Lost-time accident rate: the number of recordable injuries that resulted in either a) restricted work activities, or b) lost work days, per 200,000 hours.
Safety results for calendar year 2010
While in practice we make no distinction between employee and contractor safety and we report combined rates in our Group key performance indicators, for regulatory reporting purposes we report on employee and contractor safety separately.
Employees Safety Results
- Recordable incident rate decreased by 1%
- Lost-time accident rate increased by 59%
Contractor safety results (i.e. of contractors when working at one of our facilities)
- Recordable incident rate increased by 13%
- Lost-time accident rate increased by 39%
While our safety performance at most of our locations actually improved in 2010, and our overall safety performance is above average for both our own and other industrial sectors, our 2010 lost-time accident rate increased for both employees and contractors compared to 2009. We were deeply saddened by the death of one employee at our joint-venture plant in Adana, Turkey in 2010 and serious injuries suffered by three employees elsewhere. Those three employees have since returned to their jobs; however, we are determined to prevent any such injuries occurring again.
Benchmarking our safety performance
We benchmark our safety performance against two measures:
a) The US average for both our own industrial sector and other industrial sectors: our safety performance in 2010 was significantly better than the average achieved by companies across both our own and other industries
b) A recognised global leader in safety management and performance, DuPont: this shows that we still have some way to go if we are to achieve truly world -leading safety performance and inspires us to improve further, towards achieving that goal.
We are very pleased to report that in 2010 our Sagamore plant in Lafayette, US won three US Corn Refiners Association (CRA) awards relating to safety.
Outlook
We are committed to implementing a world-class safety culture that delivers world-class safety performance. We were disappointed with our performance in 2010, and we therefore set out a new safety strategy and objectives for 2011 and beyond which was prepared following an independent evaluation of our safety management systems by DuPont.
Around the world, our employees at every level and our contractors, are working extremely hard to deliver sustained improvement in our safety performance. We have no higher priority than safety.