Mondi Industrial Bags Earns PSSMA Safety Awards

The Industrial Bags business of Mondi in North America has earned Paper Shipping Sack Manufacturers Association (PSSMA) awards for plant safety at its Louisville, KY and Salt Lake City, UT manufacturing facilities.

The awards were presented by PSSMA chairman Don Belmont at the organization’s April 20 seminar in Atlanta.

According to Mark Ushpol, president, Mondi Industrial Bags in North America, the awards reflect Mondi’s Zero Harm safety philosophy and fundamental values.

“Passion for performance, caring and acting with Integrity are Mondi’s core values practiced worldwide,” said Ushpol. “They effectively cultivate a safe, productive and harmonious work environment and are largely responsible for the accolades we collected today.”

On behalf of the Salt Lake City facility, health, safety and environmental coordinator Melaina Mansanarez accepted the 2015 “Outstanding Plant Annual Safety Improvement Award for Plants with Over 350,000 Man Hours.” Industrial Bags’ manager corporate SHE John Raevuori accepted on behalf of Louisville’s facility for “Outstanding Plant Safety Experience for 150,000 Man-incident Free Hours in 2015.” The award was in the category for manufacturing plants with less than 150,000 man hours per year.

Salt Lake City cut its number of recordable injuries in half, from six in 2014 to three in 2015.

The Louisville plant is now approaching its third consecutive man-incident free year.
 
Overall, the Industrial Bags business of Mondi in North America improved recordables by 32% year-over-year, reducing its TRCR from 2.73 to 2.03.
According to Salt Lake City’s Mansanarez, management commitment to improving equipment guarding and a renewed emphasis on Lockout Tagout procedures played a key role in the plant’s improved safety record. Lockout Tagout safeguards employees from coming into contact with hazardous energy. As part of Mondi’s HSE improvement plan and to focus on top risks the company’s goals for 2016 include an emphasis on working safely at heights.

“We want to be an example of a plant working safely at heights,” Mansanarez said. “We’re putting time, energy and money into improving our working at heights program by adding anchor points to equipment, doing fall protection training and installing a guardrail system around the entire perimeter of our plant’s roof.”

Mondi Salt Lake City is AIB certified and mainly serves the building products/cement, chemical/mineral, pet, and food industries. Salt Lake City produces three main bag types - pasted valve, pinch bottom, and PeelPak for the dairy industry.
Health, safety, and environmental manager Jason McCarty reports from Louisville that his plant’s culture of safety is responsible for a man-incident free record of almost three full years.

“Overall the biggest factor we have working for us is our culture of high safety awareness,” McCarty said. “Our employees believe in safety and understand what they can and cannot do. We look out for each other and hold ourselves and each other accountable for following all safety procedures. This has really contributed to our success. We initiated an equipment guard program for our bag machines some years ago, and we continue that process with each new piece of equipment.”

Mondi’s Louisville plant manufactures WPP industrial bags used in the food and animal feed industries.

Dick Storat, president of PSSMA, said, "The data we collect from our members enables us to measure the industry's safety performance. This award is well deserved. The positive actions being implemented by Mondi Industrial Bags and other members we've recognized through our annual safety awards, year after year, have helped our industry accomplish a 92% reduction in reportable incidents between 1994 and 2015. We are very proud of that and applaud them on their success."

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