The St. Barbara Trophy for the K+S Group's safety competition in 2013 goes to the Neuhof-Ellers plant. The employees ended the previous year without occupational accidents to be reported. The Inactive Plants department (Bad Salzdetfurth) as well as the Merkers site of the Werra potash plant were also accident-free.

While the team from Neuhof was able to clinch the title because it achieved the greatest proportional improvement year-on-year, the employees of the Inactive Plants department and of the Merkers site are rightly proud of the fact that they have already been accident-free on several occasions.
The Neuhof-Ellers plant too has already won the trophy - a hand-carved figure of St. Barbara - for the fourth time since 1985. During the presentation of the award and the documents to the winners of the competition, K+S Member of the Board of Executive Directors Gerd Grimmig said: "Our motto of `production with safety´ applies even when performance requirements are high. I therefore appeal to all employees to recognise and prevent accident risks not only for themselves but also for their colleagues. Only if we make this our constant guide in our daily work can we do justice to our high demands for occupational safety."

Top in the industry

Due to continued intensive efforts in occupational safety, the accident rate at K+S has for years been better than the average for the mining industry. It is also far below the figures for other industrial professional associations, which have to note even more than three times the number of accidents on average. A fair proportion of this good result is due to the annual safety competition, in which the German sites of the K+S Group have been measuring up to each other since 1980.

For the Neuhof-Ellers plant, the award provides an incentive to further enhance the high level of occupational safety. This goal can only be attained by safety-conscious actions of all colleagues. Avoiding accidents is therefore a constant topic in the work process. Last year, the plant again had the organisation necessary for this certified by the "safe with the system" quality seal by the raw materials and chemical industry professional association.

About K+S

K+S is an international commodities company. We have been mining and processing mineral raw materials for 125 years. The products we produce from them are used worldwide in agriculture, food and road safety and are important elements in numerous industrial processes. The nutrients potash and salt are accompanying the megatrend for the future: A constantly growing global population is becoming increasingly prosperous and striving for a more modern standard of living, which results in an increasing consumption of mineral raw materials. We serve the resulting growth in demand from production sites in Europe, North America and South America as well as through a global distribution network. K+S is the world's largest salt producer and one of the top potash providers worldwide. With more than 14,000 employees, K+S achieved revenues in financial year 2013 of about € 4 billion and an EBIT of € 656 million. K+S is the commodities stock on the German DAX index.www.k-plus-s.com.

  • Press Release 09.04.2014 (PDF  | 139 KB)
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