Health and safety remains the most material issue identified in our materiality assessment. Our Group-wide Safety, Health and Environment Policy, available on our website, outlines our commitment to ensuring a safe and healthy working environment for employees, visitors and contractors.
Safety performanceplus
Following improved safety results in 2024, our LTIFR (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate) slipped back to 6.6 in 2025 (2024: 4.1). Our RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) results remain better than the average for the Plastics Industry1. Towards the end of 2025, we took a number of steps to ensure our performance improves, including a change in senior health and safety leadership and designing a new health and safety strategy, focussed on driving a more proactive safety culture.
The performance data shown in the table below represents the Group, inclusive of Alunet from the acquisition in March.
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | |
| Lost time injuries (employees)A, B | 27 | 19 | 27 | 48 | 36 |
| Last time injury frequency rate (LTIFR)C | 6.4 | 4.1 | 5.7 | 10.0 | 7.6 |
| Total recordable injuries (contractors) | – | – | 1 | – | – |
| RIDDOR | 8 | 6 | 11 | 23 | 28 |
| Near misses | 349 | 172 | 146 | 102 | 29 |
| Number of employee fatalities | – | – | – | – | – |
| Number of contractor fatalities | – | – | – | – | – |
| Number of cases of silicosis | – | – | – | – | – |
| Number of staff trained on health and safety standards | 122 | 241 | 322 | – | – |
| Number of health and safety training hours | 9,272 | 1,687 | 3,456 | – | – |
| Proportion of operational sites certified to ISO 45001D | 33% | 50% | 50% | – | – |
A We define lost time injuries as a full shift lost following the day of the incident.
B We record lost time injuries for all permanent and temporary employees.
C Injuries per one million hours worked.
D The proportion of sites certified has decreased as a result of the incorporation of the Alunet sites into the portfolio.
Safety targets
As an overall ambition, we continue to target the elimination of RIDDOR injuries among our employees by the end of 2027. To assist with tracking our progress we have set interim targets, and for 2026 we are aiming to achieve a 25% reduction in our lost time injury frequency rate (‘LTIFR’) and 33% reduction in our RIDDOR rate compared to 2025.
Responsibilitiesplus
Grant Davies joined as our new Head of Safety, Health, Environment and Quality (‘SHEQ’) in Q4 2025. Having joined the team in the final quarter, Grant’s initial observations include the existence of solid foundational controls that meet statutory obligations and strong health and safety reporting. Looking forward, the focus will be on establishing a proactive culture through a new, behaviour-based health and safety strategy.
Throughout 2025, health and safety performance has been discussed at all board meetings, with reviews provided by the CEO. Health and safety has also been a standing agenda item at all meetings of the Social Values and ESG Committee. With effect from December 2025, the standing agenda item has moved to main Board meetings, with updates provided by the Head of SHEQ.
As part of the integration of Alunet, we have ensured critical health and safety controls are in place, and have updated Alunet’s Health and Safety Policy to ensure alignment with the Group on key commitments and expectations.
1 Based on the Accident Statistics Data for 2024 from the British Plastics Foundation, available at https://www.bpf.co.uk/health_and_safety/Accident_Survey.aspx.
Health and safety strategyplus
Following the change in leadership, we have developed a new health and safety strategy, focussing on behaviours that will drive a more proactive safety culture across the Group. The strategy breaks safety performance into five core focus areas (the 5C’s) and identifies the behaviours that underpin success with each one. This also provides a structured framework to measure and improve health and safety performance at each site.
5C’s Health and Safety Strategy
Compliance |
Getting the basics right | Are we doing what the law and our policies say we must do? | Focussing on ensuring all sitesfollow all legal requirements, standards, inspections and reporting processes. |
Controls |
Reducing risk and strengthening processes | Are the things that can hurt people properly controlled every day? | Looking at how effectively hazards are controlled. |
Competence |
Building capability and accountability | Do people have the skills, knowledge and support to work safely? | Evaluating training, supervision, coaching and whether people are competent for their work. |
Culture |
Building safety ownership | Do people care about safety – not because they have to, but because they want to? | Focussing on people; ownership, reporting, safety conversations, leadership visibility. |
Continuous improvement |
Measure, learn, evolve | Do we learn from mistakes and get better every month? | Checking whether incidents lead to action, whether best practices are shared, and whether sites proactively improve. |
To support implementation of the strategy, we have developed a SHE Maturity Assessment and matrix, that will be used to assess and score each site against the 5C’s on a quarterly basis. The process will be underpinned by visible Executive Committee leadership and peer groupsupport. Over time, we expect to move towards a more interdependent culture in which safety becomes the leading thought in all our colleagues’ actions in the workplace.
Other achievements in 2025 include:
- Introducing dynamic risk assessments and electronic reporting of safety concerns across key operational sites
- Senior leadership team safety focused visits to key sites (once per month), to observe practices and speak directly with employees on health and safety matters and to help identify risks and opportunities for improvement.
We plan to focus on the following in 2026:
- Implement the new strategy, including the 5C’s framework and SHE Maturity Assessments across the Group
- Further progress the integration of the Alunet companies into our health and safety strategy
- Continue our specific focus on material handling equipment and transport safety, which due to the nature of our operations remain our highest health and safety risks.
- Previous ESG Leadership
- Next People First