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SAFETY PERFORMANCE

The safety of our employees, contractors and consumers is of utmost importance and EFMA’s activities in this area are substantial. We continuously improve our safety performance and we share our knowledge and experience in a safety seminar which is organised annually.

Principles of Safety in Fertilizer Production

Safety is one of the three pillars in production. The other two are efficiency and cleanliness or less pollution. EFMA adheres to 11 safety principles which have been drawn up together with the International Fertilizer industry Association.

Lost Time Injury Rates (LTIR)

The Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR) is a good indicator for safety performance in a company. Since 1997, EFMA gathers the LTIR’s of all member companies for benchmarking purposes. Data show that improvements have been made over the years. The Technology, Environment and Safety Committee has agreed on target values for employees and contractors to achieve each year. 

Although the statistics give a favourable impression, the industry has experienced some serious incidents and near-miss incidents. These are examined in detail by the industry in order to prevent it from happening again.

Incident reporting

All incidents can be prevented. To avoid suffering to people, environmental pollution, costly damages and production interruptions, EFMA believes that lessons from past incidents must be turned into prevention techniques and best practice standards. With such an objective, the members report incidents to EFMA as part of their rapid alert system. EFMA in turn shares the information with all the members for example in EFMA’s yearly safety seminar. 

EFMA keeps records of all relevant incidents that have happened in the fertilizer industry – in European countries and elsewhere. This information is stored in EFMA’ incident database and is accessible to all EFMA members. Experts from EFMA member companies analyse these accidents on a regular basis and make recommendations to prevent these accidents from occurring again.

EFMA’s Safety Seminar

In May 2007 EFMA experts came together to exchange information and views on technical, environmental and safety issues. The central theme for the safety seminar was Maintenance. This includes incidents that have occurred during major overhauls, corrosion issues, start-ups and shut-downs, Safety Integrity Level (SIL) classification and use of contractors. 

The presentations and the discussion have been out together on a CD-ROM which is available for EFMA members. 

An overview of the past Safety Seminars is given below:

  • 1997: Learning from incidents
  • 1998: Ammonia
  • 1999: Nitric Acid
  • 2000: Ammonium nitrate
  • 2001: Safety Management Systems
  • 2003: Regulatory Issues
  • 2004: EU legislation related to the Fertilizer Industry
  • 2005: Transport including loading and unloading
  • 2006: Incidents and lessons to be learned
  • 2007: Maintenance

 

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