APM Terminals to Observe 6th Annual Safety Day (The Netherlands)

The sixth annual APM Terminals “Safety Day” will be conducted today throughout the APM Terminals Global Terminal Network, with an emphasis upon the concept and practice of “intervention” as a proactive safety procedure to eliminate accidents for the company’s 25,000 employees worldwide.

“Specialized studies have shown that when confronted with potentially risky behavior or situations in industrial or workplace settings, personnel will intervene only 40% of the time, often hesitating because of concerns of inciting anger among co-workers, or simply because they believe their actions will not make a difference” noted APM Terminals Safety Activist Martin Poulsen, adding “and those are specifically the mindsets that require change. We want everyone to know that they can intervene at any time – this is not just management’s role or responsibility. Safety has no hierarchy, and all staff should feel mandated to intervene – even when senior colleagues are involved- to remove the risk of severe, or indeed any, accidents.”

Safety Day activities and agendas are established regionally and locally to address specific operational needs and circumstances, and will include Inland Services operations as well as port and terminal business units. Underscoring the personal responsibility for safety in the workplace among all employees and in every location, today’s Safety Day observances will include active participation by APM Terminals CEO Kim Fejfer by video link; Chief Commercial Officer Martin Gaard Christiansen in Shanghai; and Regional CEOs Eric Sisco (Americas), Peder Sondergaard (Africa-Middle East), Henrik Pedersen (Asia- Pacific), and Ben Vree (Europe) in Port Elizabeth (New Jersey, USA); Apapa, Nigeria; Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia and Tangiers, Morocco, respectively.

The onsite senior management presence and theme of “Intervention” during Safety Day is one component of a broad agenda specifically aimed at improving the company’s safety performance worldwide. APM Terminals has become an industry leader in accident reduction, with the company’s Lost-Time Injury Frequency (LTIF) rate falling by 64% from 9.6 per million man-hours worked in 2007, the year the Safety Day program began, to 3.46 in 2011.

Despite this demonstrated progress, APM Terminals continues to aggressively pursue new training and workplace initiatives to increase effectiveness of the existing programs.

“We are still not yet where we want to be in accident and risk reduction, and regardless of our improvements over the past years we will continue our efforts until we achieve our aim of “zero injuries and zero incidents”, stated Mr. Fejfer.

[mappress]

APM Terminals, October 16, 2012