Process Safety
We established a Process Safety Management (PSM) approach for all operations in 2015, following industry standards and best practices. In 2020, we continued to raise awareness and improve reporting of process safety indicators. As our performance in process safety has improved, we have shifted our focus to leading indicators, i.e. low impact events and systems which could lead to more serious events. We review all incidents and near misses on a weekly basis.
In the past two years, the total number of incidents involving a PSE (Level 1 and 2) decreased more than 50%, from 65 in 2019 to 30 in 2020.
Learn more in 2020 Sustainability Report.
Product Safety & Priority Substance Program
We use a product stewardship approach to ensure that product safety is considered throughout the value chain – from raw material extraction, research and development (R&D), manufacturing, transport, marketing, and application all the way through to end-of-life and/or recycling. We aim to deliver value to Nouryon and our customers by ensuring regulatory compliance in every region where we operate, and to continually develop safer and more sustainable solutions to the market.
Our industry-leading and multiple award-winning Priority Substance Program has a track-record of allowing us to promote the use of safer and more sustainable products and to manage potentially harmful substances in advance of legislation, future-proofing our products against changes in regulations.
The program reached a milestone in 2018 when we completed our review of all substances identified in our risk assessment. We screened approximately 2,500 unique substances used for our products as part of the program, resulting in detailed analyses of more than 70 substances and various changes to our products and formulations. The program is now considered to be fully embedded in the company, forming part of normal operational activities in the key functions that control raw materials used in our formulations.
