Our people are our most important asset and to help ensure the safety of every person on every site, we are implementing a new intervention program called SafeCoal.

What is Safe Coal ?

SafeCoal means commencing every task with the certainty that it will not result in a fatality or injury to yourself or other people working in or around our operations.

What does Safe Coal mean to you ?

The SafeCoal initiative requires every individual to identify the fatal risks associated with their work and ensure the appropriate defences, procedures, and systems for eliminating and/or managing those risks are in place. You are personally responsible for your own safety and those working alongside you. Under SafeCoal you are required to:

• identify the fatal hazards at your work area;
• ensure you and those working alongside you understand the fatal hazards associated with your workplace, as well as the procedures to manage these hazards; and
• ensure appropriate planned task observations are conducted around the fatal hazards.

Who will determine the fatal hazards of your role?

All of our people will be trained to identify and understand the fatal hazards associated with their specific role and learn how to manage them.

Each business Division (XCN, XCQ, XCSA and XCA) will be required to define the fatal hazard management responsibilities of every person, understanding that each role is different.

What are our Safe Coal goals?

Our goal is to provide a fatality free workplace and reduce our Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) by 50% by the end of 2011.

How will we achieve this goal?

The fatal hazards that are common across Xstrata Coal world wide will have minimum protocols developed. These protocols are to ensure that the appropriate controls are in place, that these are well understood through training and all of our people are focused on adhering to these every day.

Any situation found to be placing our people or the operation at risk will immediately be stopped. If we cannot produce coal safely, then we will stop the operation. There is no room for compromise.

Divisions will be required to implement immediate intervention plans for all poor performing operations / teams and the plans will be reviewed and action taken if improvements are not achieved.

Each day at every site, there will also be a review of the previous day’s safety performance. Prior to commencing work, each operating team will be required to identify their tasks and the potential risks or fatal hazards that may be present.

Management teams at each operation will also implement a leadership model to ensure every level of management of the site is communicating the core principles of SafeCoal.

Are we improving any existing processes?

Yes. We will be conducting a thorough review of all procedures at every level of the organisation to assess the relevance and duplication of existing corporate and site systems. We will remove any existing unnecessary systems, while still ensuring we have the required processes in place to meet our governance requirements/activities.