Metsä Fibre's Lappeenranta sawmill has been selected as Metsä Group's safest mill of 2022. In total 34 Metsä's production sites in 7 countries were evaluated. The selection criteria for the safest mill were the accident frequency rate (TRIF) of own personnel, the accident rates (TRI) of external partners and the activity in proactive safety work.
"Metsä Group has taken many joint measures to improve safety in recent years, and these are now starting to show up in our and our partners' everyday lives. This year, Lappeenranta Sawmill performed best, with a steadfast approach to tackling problems and good management of proactive safety work," says Ilkka Hämälä, President and CEO, Metsä Group.
In Lappeenranta, safety is talked about every day. "Our policy is that if work cannot be done safely, it is stopped and a safe way of doing it is planned. This principle has been adopted by both our own employees and those of our external partners," says Anssi Meuronen, Mill Manager, Lappeenranta sawmill.
The Lappeenranta sawmill has been operating without accidents for over two years, that is more than 700 days now. In 2022, occupational safety at Metsä Group as a whole also developed in the right direction, which is reflected in the key safety indicators: both LTA1 (5.2 in 2022) describing the number of accidents resulting in absence, and TRIF (total recordable injury frequency) measuring the number of accidents per working hours (6.7), decreased compared to the previous year.
"At Metsä Fibre, a safe workplace is everyone's right. Our goal is to ensure that every Metsä Fibre employee, as well as our service providers' staff, leave work every day healthy. We work uncompromisingly to continuously improve safety, which is why we demand strong safety expertise not just from our own employees but from our suppliers and partners as well," says Metsä Fibre's CEO Ismo Nousiainen.
Photographs: https://databank.metsagroup.com/l/PQFV_Rk6jztD