By racking up more than 8700 days free of lost-time accidents (LTAs) in its manufacturing and sales and distribution sites, LINPAC Packaging has recorded its best ever health and safety performance.
As of 31 December 2011, the food packaging company had achieved a total of 8727 LTA-free days, covering its 3000-plus workforce employed across its 18 manufacturing sites and numerous sales and distribution facilities, in Europe, South America and China.
According to the company, its safety record has been transformed by delivering a strategy that encourages behavioural change, based in part on a mandatory 30-second risk-assessment programme to quickly identify hazardous situations.
Other key milestones the company highlights include:
John Jones, group HSHE (health, safety, hygiene and environment) director at LINPAC said: “The dramatic decline in accidents and incidents over the past three years has fed through straight to our bottom line for our investors, but best of all we are keeping our people safe.”
Mark Reynolds, group HSHE and energy manager, added: “We began by gradually moving away from the idea that LINPAC Packaging simply had to deliver statutory requirements throughout the world to meet its targets, to a position where every LINPAC employee is fully aware of their roles and responsibilities to protect themselves and others.
“We have driven our core strategy of continuous improvement to ensure that all accidents, incidents and near misses are fully investigated and closed out through a seven-step programme, which is subsequently communicated to, and adopted by, all our sites worldwide.”
Describing HSHE as “first in line” when it comes to setting corporate and personal objectives, Jones added that the proactive measures it has taken have had other benefits for the business. He explained: “As well as introducing significant cultural change in our multi-cultural working environment, LINPAC Packaging has also witnessed an improvement in productivity following the reduction in downtime associated with accidents. As an added value for our investors, we have also reduced our ‘risk profile’ and this has helped us reduce insurance costs significantly in a ‘rising cost’ market.”
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