Aiming for zero accidents

At Metsä Fibre, we consider safety to be the most important professional skill. Safety is key priority for us in everything we do, and everyone at Metsä Fibre has the right to a safe workplace. Our goal is for every Metsä Fibre employee and every partner employee to head home healthy.

Safety management

Key aspects of safety management include proactive safety work, risk identification and assessment, addressing unsafe working methods, and ensuring the entire personnel’s commitment. We engage in long-term work to improve safety at work and require occupational safety skills from our suppliers and partners as well.

The development and harmonisation of Group-level safety standards began in 2020, and the work will continue with the implementation of new standards and the continuous improvement of existing guidelines. We provide all our employees and the partners working at our mills with induction training on safe ways of working.

Our goals and the occupational safety indicators we monitor encourage us to develop our operations continuously. In 2023, Metsä Fibre's lost time accident frequency (LTA1) per million working hours was 7 and the total recordable incident frequency (TRIF) was 8.9. The internationally used TRIF metric takes all recorded accidents at work into account. Our long-term goal is zero accidents. All accidents, hazardous situations and close calls are investigated, and corrective measures are adopted to prevent similar situations in the future.

Worker putting on safety helmet

Safety in practice

We engage in long-term work to improve safety at work and require occupational safety skills from our suppliers and partners as well. We provide all our employees and the partners working at our mills with induction training on safe ways of working.

Safety induction

Before they start work at a Metsä Group site, our suppliers go through a general safety induction and a job-specific safety induction and they must obtain the required work permits. Contractors are obligated to assess the risks of their own range of work and to prepare a safety plan for them. These plans must be delivered to the relevant mill before starting the work. We assist the contractors in the risk assessment and in the preparation for those risks.

Completing the general safety induction is mandatory for all Metsä Group employees and all contractors working at the company’s mills. The drivers of heavy vehicles must complete their own training. Visitors are inducted at our mills.

Occupational safety card

A valid occupational safety card is mandatory when working at the Metsä Group mills in Finland. Also, another safety card called Valtticard is used at the mills. Valtticard is an electronic ID that complies with the Occupational Safety and Health Act and serves also as an access pass to the building site. The card is mandatory at our mills in Finland.

Ensuring safety during annual maintenance shutdowns

Everyone arriving at a Metsä Fibre mill for annual maintenance work must complete an annual maintenance induction. This induction is valid for a calendar year. The course can be completed in Finnish or English. To sign in, you need a Finnish tax number recorded in the public register of tax numbers.

Safety information signs attached to safety fence in a production facility

Promoting and maintaining wellbeing at work

Our operation is based on continuous improvement. That creates opportunities for improving skills and finding new strengths. In 2023, average training hours per employee was 17,4 hours.

Every Metsä Fibre employee has the right for a personal development discussion on an annual basis. This is an opportunity to review both personal and departmental goals.

As an employer, we are guided by several policies and the ethical principles (Code of Conduct), renewed in 2019, which we require every employee to comply with. Among our key principles are equality and gender equity, diversity and inclusion. We support the development of our employees' skills through on-the-job learning, training and job rotation.

Proactive operations

Promoting and maintaining wellbeing at work and working capacity is based on preventive measures. We have a model that includes early support, assessment of work ability and a personal work ability plan.

Through regular personnel surveys and their results, we recognise development areas in our operations, define development actions and systematically follow up their implementation. In 2020, the Metsä Group also introduced a large-scale ethics barometer, which helps us to see how business ethics and the Code of Conduct are realized in practice. Based on these results, we are developing the company culture further.