Significant strides have been made in the paper and board industry towards reducing incident and injury rates and improving overall health and safety performance.
The Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) recently announced that three-year targets set in 2008 by PABIAC (the Paper and Board Industry Advisory Committee) have been exceeded.
Overall, the accident rate in the corrugated, papermaking and recovered-paper industries has gone down from 1257 per 100,000 employees in 2008 to 885 per 100,000 employees in 2011 – a year-on-year reduction of 10.5 per cent against a target of 10 per cent.
In the corrugated sector, a targeted initiative to reduce the number of injuries resulting from machinery interventions has resulted in the rate falling to 126 per 100,000 in 2011 from 465 per 100,000 in 2008 – an impressive 73-per-cent reduction.
The recovered-paper sector bucked the waste and recycling-industry trend by recording a drop in its injury rate from 1088 per 100,000 workers in 2008 to 466 per 100,000 in 2011.
In addition to the reduction in injury rates, there has been a more than threefold increase in the number of sites that have benchmarked their health and safety management performance and undertaken and acted on the results of employee health and safety climate surveys.
Occupational health has been more prominent on the industry’s agenda, with an increase in the number of companies reviewing and upgrading their occupational health arrangements.
According to the CPI, the strategic leadership of the tripartite PABIAC – comprising the HE, employers and unions – has been a significant factor in these improvements, with commitment from 31 senior managers voluntarily signing the PABIAC pledge.
Commenting on the achievements, Andrew Braund, CPI director of health, safety and social affairs, said: “Over a number of years the paper industry has shown a determined effort to be among the best-performing industries in manufacturing. Our achievements to date are a direct result of industry, employers and employees working together, and, under the auspices of PABIAC, we will continue to set the direction that will help the paper industry achieve further improvements as we strive towards our ultimate goal of zero accidents.”
The 2012-2014 strategy for the industry will be launched by HSE chair Judith Hackitt at the CPI Biennial Health and Safety Conference on 8 November 2011.
