Glencore to relaunch fatality initiative following missed target

Glencore chief executive officer Ivan Glasenberg has announced that the company’s SafeWork program will resume with a revised strategy in 2021.

The global initiative pushes sustainable attitudes to safety throughout Glencore’s workforce.

Glencore revealed that it did not met its five-year target of a 50 per cent reduction to its lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) and total recorded injury frequency rate (TRIFR) by 2020, according to its annual sustainability report released in April.

The company launched SafeWork in 2013 to eliminate the company’s fatalities, however the company conducted a review of the project in 2020.

Despite the missed target, both Glencore’s LTIFR and TRIFR were lower last year compared with the prior period.

The LTIFR was 0.94 compared with 0.99 in 2019, and the TRIFR was 2.6 per million hours worked compared with 2.9 in 2019.

“We recognise that SafeWork is the right program if well led and fully and consistently implemented,” Glasenberg said.

“In 2021, we will be relaunching SafeWork. We have made it easier to use and simpler to understand. We have reset expectations and clarified requirements.”

Glencore stated its copper and zinc commodity departments had the poorest safety performance.

Both departments presented safety cases to Glencore’s health, safety environment and communities (HSEC) committee.

“The safety cases describe the actions they are implementing to achieve our goal of zero fatalities. In September, we initiated a verification process to confirm the effective implementation and closeout of the corrective actions identified during the assessments,” Glencore chairman Tony Hayward said.

“I am pleased to report that both departments began to show an improvement in their safety performance during 2020.”

Eight Glencore workers lost their lives in 2020, the company reported.

“While we saw a year-on-year improvement in our group-wide safety performance, we are saddened to report that eight people lost their lives at our operations in 2020,” Glasenberg said.

“Any loss of life is unacceptable.”

Glencore announced in March that Glasenberg would retire on June 30 and be succeeded by Gary Nagle.