U.K.'s Linpac sets new health, safety record with more than 8,700 lost time accident-free days in its manufacturing, sales, distribution sites across Europe, South America, China

Lorena Madrigal

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom , January 23, 2012 (press release) – LINPAC Packaging has set itself a new record for health and safety by racking up more than 8700 lost time accident-free days in its manufacturing and sales and distribution sites across Europe, South America and China.

As of 31 December 2011, the food packaging company had achieved a total of 8727 lost time accident-free days for the 3000-plus people employed throughout its 18 manufacturing sites and numerous sales and distribution facilities. Several sites alone each achieved 1,000 lost time accident-free days.

John Jones, Group HR and HSHE (Human Resources and Health, Safety, Hygiene and Environment) Director at LINPAC said: “The dramatic decline in accidents and incidents over the past three years has fed straight through 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 all LINPAC employees are 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 accident, 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.”

LINPAC Packaging has transformed its safety record by delivering a rigorous strategy that encourages behavioural change, with a mandatory 30-second risk assessment programme to quickly identify hazardous situations. “This pre-task risk assessment is now embedded into the safety ethic of the whole workforce,” said Mr Reynolds.

Other key milestones of the company include:

Year-on-year decline in accidents – well ahead of the industry average.
Overall equipment effectiveness pushing above world-class levels.
Employee involvement in improvement projects increased by more than 70%.
Best-in-class attendance levels for a manufacturing, sales and distribution business.

John Jones added: “Our health, safety, hygiene and environment (HSHE) performance would have been ‘business as usual’ – with year-on-year incremental improvement – had we not taken a proactive approach to implement a ‘step change’ programme for safety improvement in all of our operations.

“HSHE is at the top of the operational excellence objectives for LINPAC Packaging across the globe. Within the deployment of our strategy, HSHE is the ‘first in line’ when it comes to setting corporate and personal objectives, and we have delivered this strategic approach to improvement through direct action in all of our factories, distribution centres and sales offices.”

Mr Jones concluded: “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 down-time associated with accidents. As an added value for our investors, we have also reduced our ‘risk profile’ and this has helped us to cut insurance costs significantly in a ‘rising cost’ market.”

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