Health and safety remains the most material issue identified in our materiality assessment. Our Group-wide Safety, Health and Environment Policy, available on our website, outlines our commitment to ensuring a safe and healthy working environment for employees, visitors and contractors.
SHE strategy
We update our Safety First strategy each year based on our health and safety performance, employee and management feedback, plus emerging trends and best practice. We continually engage with employees regarding health and safety issues through volunteer safety representatives and monthly safety meetings to ensure their participation in health and safety management.
This year our Safety First strategy focused on 12 core initiatives, which have served to develop the knowledge and awareness of health and safety issues throughout our workforce, leading to the better behaviours that have underpinned an improvement in our overall performance. We are confident that we are developing a culture of continual improvement in safety standards.
ISO certification and compliance plus
In 2024, Eurocell maintained the ISO 45001 certification at four of our eight manufacturing sites (2023: four sites). We continue to work towards our target to implement safety management systems that satisfy the requirements of ISO 45001 at all of our operational facilities by the end of 2025.
We are pleased that the two Health and Safety Executive (‘HSE’) Improvement Notices that we reported on last year, relating to dust and machine guarding, have been revoked, as they have been addressed to the satisfaction of the HSE.
However, we received a Notice of Contravention in 2024 following a significant incident resulting in 4 months absence for the injured party. We have formally responded to the HSE’s notice, outlining our investigation into the incident and the corrective action plan developed, which is being rigorously tracked.
Safety performanceplus
We have delivered another significant improvement in our overall safety performance in 2024, reducing the number of lost time injuries by 30%, the lost time injury frequency rate by 28%, and the RIDDOR rate by 45%. We have achieved this improvement despite three major incidents that we are disappointed to report.
We have undertaken a thorough investigation in each case and implemented corrective actions to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future.
The number of near misses reported in 2024 increased by 18% this year, although we attribute this to an enhanced focus on hazard identification and awareness with the implementation of our new hazard reporting process
Safety targets
As an overall ambition, we are targeting the elimination of RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) injuries among our employees by the end of 2027. To assist with tracking our progress we have set interim targets, and for 2025 we are aiming to achieve a 25% reduction in our lost time injury frequency rate (‘LTIFR’) and 33% reduction in our RIDDOR rate compared to 2024.
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | |
| Lost time injuries (employees)1,2 | 19 | 27 | 48 | 36 | 24 |
| Last time injury frequency rate (LTIFR)3 | 4.1 | 5.7 | 10.0 | 7.6 | 7.4 |
| Total recordable injuries (contractors) | - | 1 | - | - | 1 |
| RIDDOR | 6 | 11 | 23 | 28 | 19 |
| Near misses | 172 | 146 | 102 | 29 | n/a |
| Number of employee fatalities | - | - | - | - | - |
| Number of contractor fatalities | - | - | - | - | - |
| Number of cases of silicosis | - | - | - | - | - |
| Number of staff trained on health and safety standards | 241 | 322 | - | - | - |
| Number of health and safety training hours | 1,687 | 3,456 | - | - | - |
| Proportion of operational sites certified to ISO 45001 | 50% | 50% |
1 Injuries per 1 million hours worked.
2 We record lost time injuries for all permanent and temporary employees.
3 Injuries per one million hours worked.
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