Safety program and performance

Responsible Operations through Continuous Improvement

Safety first

One of our core values is that ‘we do it right.’ and this includes a culture of safety awareness to protect our people, contractors, customers, neighbors, and the environment.

Our Safety Ambition: Zero injuries, waste and harm

We have leading management systems in place to drive continuous improvement in safety, but we also believe that safety needs to be embedded in our culture at every level. To increase awareness and strengthen our safety culture, we proactively report on leading parameters such as near misses - an event which had no impact but had the potential to result in injury, ill-health, or damage to assets or the environment; and hazards - any condition or situation that could potentially harm people, products, or the environment.

In addition, we use a Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) program at all locations to identify unsafe behaviors and spark behavioral change of employees and contractors to reduce potential hazards in the workplace. These observations are performed regularly and in a structured way based on the location’s observation strategy. Once a year, we also organize a company-wide Safety Day to promote safety awareness and strengthen its global safety culture.

We conduct internal audits on 100% of our sites at least once every 3 years for HSE&S.

Decrease in Recordable Incident Rate

Recordable Incident Rate decreased by ~50% between 2018 and 2021

Decrease of Process Safety Incident Rate

Process Safety Incident Rate decreased 80% between 2017 and 2021

14 Responsible Care® Facility Safety Awards

Awarded 14 Responsible Care® Facility Safety Awards by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in 2021

Safety performance recognition

Our safety performance has been recognized several times in recent years by external agencies. For example, many of our US facilities have received the “Facility Safety Awards” from the American Chemistry Council. In June of 2020, we also received the prestigious Safe Handling Award from Canadian National Railway and won the Gold Award for 2019. The award recognized Nouryon for its safe rail loadings in North America and for sending over 150 shipments with zero spills or product releases from a railcar.

We were also honored with six Texas Chemical Council (TCC) /Association of Chemical Industry of Texas Awards for safety in 2020. Our sites in Fort Worth, Houston, and Battleground received TCC Caring for Texas Awards, which recognize these sites’ exemplary achievements in plant operation as well as their commitment to employees and their local communities

Our Life-Saving Rules

The purpose of our Life-Saving Rules are to prevent a fatality or serious injury to our employees, contractors, or visitors by ensuring a safe work environment and safe behavior.

"Safety sits at the heart of Nouryon’s success and it is essential for every one of us to take ownership of our own and others’ safety."
Charlie Shaver, Chairman and CEO

People and Process safety


People safety

It is our belief that every injury is preventable, and we uphold an ambition to have zero injuries in the workplace. We have succeeded in reducing the number of incidents considerably over the years and our Total Reportable Injury Rate (TRR) ranks in the top quartile of American Chemistry Council members.

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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.

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More reliable factories thanks to new digital technology

A partnership with startup Semiotic Labs allows us to fix equipment before it breaks.

Learn more - Nouryon's sustainability pillars

Improving our safety performance and environmental footprint

We continuously work to improve our safety performance and environmental footprint for the benefit of our employees, contractors, customers, neighbors, and the environment

Growing our sustainable solutions

We provide solutions that are essential in applications ranging from pharmaceuticals and farming to electric cars and building insulation. Our goal is to deliver not just the desired functionality but improved sustainability performance as well.

Engaging people, partners, and society

At Nouryon, we aim to achieve sustainable business growth and have a positive impact on people’s everyday lives through our essential solutions as well as our actions.

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