Ten Years of hard work for Smelter

Ten Years of hard work for Smelter to win Business Ethics Award

New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (NZAS) was awarded the AUT Business Ethics Award for its “The Goal is Zero” safety programme at the Deloitte / Management Top 200 Awards 2004 last night.

Comalco Chief Operations Officer Tom Campbell is delighted that NZAS’ commitment to the health and safety of its employees has again been recognised. “Working with molten metal may be considered hazardous, but at NZAS we believe that all injuries and illnesses can be eliminated,” said Mr Campbell. “Our goal is zero injuries and zero incidents.

“Commitment to the health and safety of our employees is the key driver of the NZAS culture and we set a demanding target of a 50 per cent improvement in safety performance each year.

“Ten years ago NZAS’ safety performance was only average by world standards. That was simply unacceptable. It has taken ten years of unending focus on safety, by the entire workforce at Tiwai to get to this point. Any injury at all is unacceptable and we are determined to truly reach our goal of zero.”

Earlier this year the International Aluminium Institute rated NZAS as the Best Performer of 60 smelters worldwide in their annual Safety Performance Benchmarking exercise.

Tom Campbell, Comalco Chief Operations Officer, PH 0274 353 487 Brian Cooper, GM Operations PH 03 218 5442, or 027 2710 622

Notes for editors: NZAS is a joint venture owned by Comalco Limited (79.36 per cent) and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd (20.64%). NZAS produces 334,00 tonnes of aluminium per annum including the highest purity aluminium in the world. NZAS contributes an average net economic benefit of $121 million per annum to NZ and is a world leader in the aluminium industry in terms of production, efficiency and safety. NZAS is five star accredited by the National Occupational Safety Standards Association of Australia and participates in the ACC Partnership Programme at the highest level available.

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