Safety, health and environment (SHE)

Achievements

After several years of rising injury rates, it is very pleasing to report a 27 per cent reduction in the Group’s Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) for employees. At year-end, this indicator stood at 0,83 as result of deliberate efforts by the operating companies.

The wellness programme, described in more detail elsewhere in this report, has met with real acceptance from employees. Buy-in by unions has been particularly gratifying.

Many of AECI’s operations have the potential to impact significantly on the environment. Consequently, the management of environmental issues is very important. The ISO 14001 environmental management standard is the most widely recognised, externally verifiable standard in use internationally. AEL has implemented the standard at its main South African manufacturing operations, and at most of its international sites. Most of Chemserve’s manufacturing facilities that can have a significant environmental impact have the standard in place, and, in the property segment, Heartland Leasing has implemented ISO 14001 at its Umbogintwini site.

AECI has registered two projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The second project, a nitrous oxide reduction installation at No. 11 nitric acid plant, has reduced emissions of this potent greenhouse gas by 80 per cent.