Mark Pearson, from Saica Pack Wigan, winner of the third Saica Group H&S Award

• The award, a cheque for 5,000 euros to be donated to an NGO, recognises best practice in occupational health and safety.

• The jury also recognised the work of employees of Saica Natur Castan, Saica Paper Partington, Saica Pack Meco and Saica Flex Wigan with runners-up prizes of 2,500 euros each, also to be donated to an NGO.

Mark Pearson, an employee of Saica Pack Wigan (United Kingdom), has won the third edition of the Saica Group's Health and Safety Award, which was presented this Wednesday at the Saica Group's corporate headquarters in Zaragoza and which recognises the best practices in health and safety within the company. Coinciding with the celebration of World Day for Safety and Health at Work on 28th April, the jury also distinguished the work of employees at Saica Natur Castan (Burgos, Santander and Valladolid), Saica Paper Partington, Saica Pack Meco and Saica Flex Wigan with runners-up prizes.

About the winner, the jury highlighted his exemplary commitment to safety and his initiative in implementing a visual system with coloured wristbands to identify interventions and reinforce compliance with lockout procedures. This simple but effective solution has improved visibility, control and safety culture, gaining the spontaneous involvement of staff and standardising best practices throughout the plant. The president and CEO of the group, Susana Alejandro, has awarded him with a cheque for 5,000 euros, which, in accordance with the terms of the award, Mark Pearson has decided to donate to the Save the Children organisation.

The runners-up prizes, endowed with a cheque for 2,500 euros, went to: 

- To José Luis Serrano and Juan José de la Vega, from Saica Natur Castan, for their contribution to their colleagues´safety through the development and implementation of an innovative hydraulic unclogging system for the paper and board press hopper. This system eliminates the need to work at heights and confined spaces and represents an improvement that can be replicated at other plants, demonstrating how technical redesign can eliminate risks from the source. The prize will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontièrs. 

- To the H&S Comittee of PM11, from Saica Paper UK, in Partington, for creating a safer environment through a colour card system inspired by football. For the past 10 years, this system has allowed employees and contractors to highlight safe and unsafe practices and conditions, promoting a shared safety culture. The donation will go to Save the Children.

- To Consuelo Saneiro and José Ángel Gómez, from Saica Pack Meco, for their example of proactive safety culture by identifying a risk in time, preventing a serious accident and turning the experience into a permanent awareness practice. The donation will be made to Save the Children

- To the Saica Flex Wigan staff, for transforming a poem about responsibility into a moving collective video, which reinforces every month the commitment with the mutual care and prevention. This initiative has strengthened the company’s values-based safety culture. The donation will be donated to Save the Children.

Furthermore, the finalists in this edition are the Emergency Team from Saica Natur Alcalá de Guadaira; Javier Calderón and Álvaro Robayo (Saica Natur Cataluña); David Salvador (Saica Paper El Burgo de Ebro); the Biomass Team from Saica Paper Champblain; Karine Delhorme (Saica Pack Toulouse); Maurizio Zacchilli and Tomas Corvini (Saica Flex Meldola); and Dan Springett, Carl Banks, Gary Wild, Owen Harding, and Peter Wild (Saica Flex Buxton). All of them will receive a diploma at the upcoming ceremony on Wednesday.

The event, led by the group's H&S director, Óscar Per, opened with the words of the company's general manager, Enrique de Yraolagoitia, who congratulated the award winners and explained that the application of the 12 principles of safe behaviour, included in the internal campaign 'It's about me', "is especially important". "By following these principles or initiatives such as these awards it is once again clear that at Saica, safety always comes first”, he added.

For her part, and after also recognising the merits of the winners, the President and CEO of the Saica Group, Susana Alejandro, emphasized that “we are on the right path, as evidenced by the increase in the number of participants in these awards, the growing diversity of countries represented among the candidates, and, above all, the 24% reduction since 2017 in our rate of lost-time accidents.”