Key challenges

Eliminating fatalities and serious injuries is our key safety challenge with a particular focus on the following hazards:

  • mobile equipment – underground and surface;
  • work methods;
  • equipment failure;
  • fall of ground; and
  • electrical hazards.
"The Group total recordable injury frequency rate reduced by 30% and the lost time injury frequency rate improved by 33% in 2004"

Fatality prevention

This year, Xstrata did not meet one of its primary objectives, that of being a zero fatality business. Tragically, six of our colleagues including contractors lost their lives in workplace incidents. In response to these fatalities, Xstrata CEO Mick Davis called an urgent meeting of Commodity Business Chief Executives, the Chief Operating Officers of the affected divisions and the General Manager HSE in October 2004 to analyse why the existing environment in South Africa is giving rise to these incidents. The Group Executive Committee concluded that:

  • the overall safety culture that the senior management team is trying to embed across our operations has not been fully integrated into middle management;
  • we need to ensure that the right managerial judgements are made regarding safety; and
  • there is an underlying culture that supports risk-taking behaviour among our employees in South Africa and we need to understand that culture in order to address it.

In response to these issues, the Chief Executive Xstrata Alloys, Peet Nienaber, and the Chief Executive Xstrata Coal, Peter Coates, developed and presented to the Group Executive Committee comprehensive plans for safety improvement in their South African businesses and announced new senior positions to help transfer best practices from our other high performing operations, particularly in Australia. Xstrata Alloys appointed a Group Health, Safety, Environment and Community Manager and Xstrata Coal appointed a General Manager, Group Safety. These senior managers will assist the operations managers in addressing the improvements required at our South African operations.

At the announcement of our annual results, Chief Executive Mick Davis made the following remarks:

It is particularly pleasing that the improvements in productivity and efficiency across our businesses have gone hand-in-hand with our operations achieving above-average improvements in safety performance. The total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) was reduced by 30% and the lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) reduced by 33% in 2004.

Significant improvements were made at our copper and zinc businesses at Mount Isa, where the transformation programme focused on improving all aspects of operational performance. As a consequence, there has been a step change across all of the former MIM operations, as safety officers were taken out of head offices and put back into the operations, in line with Xstrata's decentralised management structure.

Overall, Xstrata Copper recorded a 49% decrease in the TRIFR, Xstrata Zinc improved by 56% and Xstrata Coal improved by 18% overall. The latter included a substantial improvement of 32% in the former MIM Queensland coal operations, where as reported last year – we were confronted with significant safety issues associated with frictional ignition events when we took over the business. These were addressed and no such events occurred in 2004.

Xstrata's safety performance, in respect of the TRIFR and the LTIFR, is better than the Minerals Council of Australia's (MCA) average for these indicators. I am not for a moment suggesting that we don't face major challenges in embedding a culture of safety, particularly in our South African businesses, where employees find it hard to make the adaptation from a risk-tolerant society to a risk-averse work environment. However, our progress is encouraging and we remain committed to making our workplaces ever safer and healthier.

Case study | KATINA

All critical and high potential risk HSEC incidents are reported monthly to the Group Executive and are investigated by a team of senior operations and HSEC personnel to determine their underlying causes and to develop preventive action plans. Key leading HSEC indicators and frequency rate trends are reported monthly to the Group Executive Committee. On a quarterly basis, a comprehensive HSEC report is presented to the Board.

We remain committed to our belief that our goal of zero fatalities is achievable in our business.

Addressing the behavioural issues that contribute to these events is the greatest challenge we face. Behavioural safety programmes are in place in many parts of the organisation and are being implemented across the Group. We have accelerated the implementation of these programmes in our South African operations.

In addition, all operations are required to align their comprehensive safety management systems with Xstrata's HSEC Policy and 17 Standards, which were introduced in 2004. Compliance with the policy and standards assures operations that they are compliant to the international Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) management standard OHSAS 18001. Some operations have also chosen to become externally certified to this standard. Lydenburg chrome smelter has achieved OHSAS 18001 certification, and Rustenburg, Wonderkop and Boshoek chrome smelters, the vanadium operation Rhovan and Northfleet lead refinery are working towards certification over the next two years. Management systems at five sites are certified to ISO 9001 – Rustenburg, Wonderkop, Boshoek, Nordenham and the Townsville copper refinery.