A Focus on Occupational Safety
For ALTANA, the health and safety of employees is its top
priority. Various technical and organizational measures that
we implement to protect employees from hazards accord-
ing to the respective sites’ production conditions as well as to
the laws and regulations in effect at the location. ALTANA
also relies on training and other measures to achieve a uni-
form safety culture.
Since 2007, ALTANA has used the Work Accident Indi-
cator (WAI) as the most important key performance indi-
cator observing occupational safety at all sites and has been
steadily improving it. The indicator provides the number
of occupational accidents and lost work days and sets them
in relation to the total working hours. On the basis of this
data, ALTANA’s Management Board and the EH&S depart-
ment define three WAI values each year as targets that
apply to all of the companies in the ALTANA Group.
In 2017, as in the previous year, there were no fatal ac-
cidents. Some sites achieved remarkable results in terms of
occupational safety. For instance, BYK Tongling and ELANTAS
Beck India at the Ankleshwar and Pimpri sites, respectively,
have not recorded any lost work time due to accidents for
more than ten years. The following sites have been acci-
dent-free for more than four years: ECKART Zhuhai (seven
years), ACTEGA Rhenacoat and ELANTAS Tongling (each
six years), ACTEGA Foshan (five years), and ELANTAS Europe
in Ascoli Piceno (four years).
In spite of this excellent development, ALTANA did not
reach the safety targets it set itself for the year under review
and did not improve its accident statistics. Analyses of the
accidents show that there were technical and organizational
causes in only a few cases, and in most cases the reasons
were behavior-based.
WAI 1 (number of occupational accidents with lost work time of
one day or more per million working hours)
2014 3.81
2015 4.73
2016 3.94
2017 4.01
(Target 2018: 3.00)
Target 2017: 3.00
WAI 2 (number of occupational accidents with lost work time of
more than three days per million working hours)
2014 3.19
2015 3.22
2016 2.52
2017 3.06
(Target 2018: 2.10)
Target 2017: 2.10
WAI 3 (number of lost work days due to occupational accidents per
million working hours)
2014 51.52
2015 57.04
2016 38.21
2017 54.58
(Target 2018: 40.00)
Target 2017: 40.00
ALTANA is using this result as an opportunity to rely even
more on further training in the future. In addition to the
further development of technical and organizational mea-
sures, behavior-based safety training serves to sharpen
employees’ awareness of safety issues and train them to be-
have appropriately in any given situation. Also, ALTANA’s
82 Safety and Health