Ag Growth International (AGI) has unveiled its latest Sustainability Progress Update, which highlights how important safety is to achieving its mission.
Safety is a cornerstone of AGI’s culture and a critical value across the organisation.
Paul Householder, AGI president and CEO, said the business has honed a company-wide focus on safety over the past three years and has invested significantly in providing the training, tools, and resources to make every day at AGI safer than the last.
“With proper focus and resourcing, we have seen a pronounced improvement in our safety metrics over recent years,” he said in the company’s sustainability update.
AGI provides solutions for food infrastructure across the world, including seed, fertiliser, grain, feed, and food processing systems. Its products, equipment and technologies serve to store, blend, mix, convey, condition, process and protect agriculture inputs and crops.
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Its corporate mission is to continue supplying the world’s food infrastructure, and in the process, enrich the lives of its employees, customers, shareholders, and the communities it operates in.
Bill Lambert, former chairman of AGI, said in the company’s sustainability progress update that the company contributes to helping solve some of the world’s most urgent sustainability issues in terms of food security, scarcity, and spoilage.
“While our equipment and systems naturally align with societal objectives in terms of food supply, AGI has forged ahead on all areas related to sustainability and broader environmental, social, and governance priorities.”
Some of the key challenges facing the global food supply chain include feeding a growing population, avoiding food losses and wastage, planning for extreme weather events, and improving the environmental impact of food production.
In late 2020, the company introduced its sustainability roadmap, which structured its existing practices and new efforts into four broad focus areas – sustainable manufacturing, responsible conduct, compelling solutions, and people wellbeing.
In defining its approach, AGI broadened its thinking on sustainability to also include areas outside of crops and food supplies, incorporating well-being into its strategy.
The business has elevated safety to be the first topic on its agendas at all internal townhalls, board updates, and executive team meetings. It has also significantly increased its focus on safety by adding resources, training, tools, and senior personnel.
As a result, the company has seen a strong improvement in overall safety performance including a 50 per cent reduction in its lost time injury metric over the past two years.
It has also documented a formal safety policy and developed a comprehensive system that proactively monitors and guides safety performance at the facility level. The AGI Safety Management System aims to promote continuous improvement that goes beyond the requirements of local, state, and federal requirements.
Safety performance is continuously assessed based on leading and lagging indicators, allowing each facility to work towards improving their own performance goals while ensuring all rules and regulations are met or exceeded.
To help build its safety culture, AGI also developed a Safety Awards Program. There are four award categories including outstanding performance (individual), overall safety performance (facility), progress in safety (facility) and safety at a customer site or project (facility).
AGI has also developed an app that provides centralised and standardised methods for its facilities to enter data related to safety incidents. It uses a common definition globally to ensure data is consistent and accurate.
The AGI Safety Incident App replaces its prior methods of collecting safety data which were more manual and required significant effort to consolidate, standardise, and review. Automatic reporting of incidents ensures the correct AGI safety leaders are made aware of all incidents in a timely fashion. In addition, data can be normalised across all locations for analysis on future opportunities and targeted safety initiatives.
AGI plans to ensure the app provides full and complete visibility into safety-related incidents and data. This will help strengthen its approach to safety and highlight areas to prioritise, further embedding safety into the fabric of its culture.
https://www.bulkhandlingreview.com.au/agi-focuses-on-sustainable-safety/