Continued

A team at Elementis Specialties, St Louis, US, has successfully improved their safety record during 2003.	Management safety inspections are carried out regularly.	As part of a career development programme two Specialty Rubber employees have gained qualifications in business administration.

Planning for further improvement
We currently use three specific techniques to ensure we continue to improve our safety performance:

• the Elementis incident investigation reporting system, implemented in 2001, which gives an intensified focus on minor accidents and near misses

• particular programmes targeting behavioural safety

• management safety inspections.

The global Elementis incident investigation reporting system combines consistency in reporting with visibility of results to managers at other locations and ensures comprehensive reporting in a timely manner. The system focuses on establishing the root causes of incidents and then implementing effective corrective actions to reduce the probability of more serious incidents. Worldwide use of the Elementis incident investigation reporting system allows learning to be shared. Use of the system is tracked and reported on monthly.

A behavioural safety programme, which relies on the personal involvement of employees in the identification of potentially unsafe behaviour, has been used successfully at the Elementis Chromium site at Eaglescliffe, UK, since 1997. A similar process was introduced progressively in Elementis Specialties during 2002/2003, while Elementis Pigments will launch a behavioural safety programme in 2004.

Management safety inspections are carried out by both local and non-local managers, using a check sheet, during their visits to sites. These inspections provide a third party view of safety on topics such as working conditions, unsafe actions and housekeeping. They also actively demonstrate to all employees our total corporate commitment to safety.

Corporate health and safety compliance audits
We conduct regular health and safety audits. This includes a programme to ensure we meet the legal requirements and codes of practice in the countries in which we operate, as well as our own HSE policy commitments. Health and safety audits have been carried out within the last two years at all Elementis sites in the US and at the five principal manufacturing sites in the UK, mainland Europe and Malaysia.

Safety goal
Elementis is committed to providing a safe work place. Our objective is zero injuries. During 2003, we reduced recordable incidents by approximately 26 per cent, to 2.45 per 200,000 hours worked. Our target for 2004 is a reduction to a frequency rate of 1.8. This would represent a further 26 per cent improvement towards our longer term goal of being in the top quartile for comparable companies in both the US and the UK, by 2006.

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