Remarkable milestone

In September 2019, our Andrade iron ore mine in Bela Vista de Minas, Brazil, celebrated 27 years without lost-time injury. The mine has now also been fatality-free for 73 years. What makes this latest milestone particularly remarkable is that it was achieved in a year when the mine implemented a new concentration system, at the same time as continuing routine operations. As Director-General of BioFlorestas and Mina do Andrade, Wagner Barbosa, points out: ‘In this project alone, more than 700,000 hours were worked, between civil and assembly, without accidents.’

Culture of safety

According to ArcelorMittal Mining Brazil CEO Sebastião Costa Filho, Andrade’s excellent record is a result of both leadership and employees engaging with safety: ‘We have a strong safety culture, managers follow specific practices designed to ensure safety at work, and employees make safety part of their everyday routine.’ In 2019, Andrade also put in place a new management system, GIS, aimed at making decision-making more agile and effective.

Take Care programme

The Andrade mine champions safety using ArcelorMittal’s Take Care programme, a 10-year, three-phase initiative in which 45,000 employees have already undergone phase 1 training worldwide. Take Care uses experiential training designed to embed safety into the way people work. At Andrade, as Sebastião Costa Filho explains, this has included ‘Knowledge blitzes, campaigns, audits, lectures and other activities from the leaders and employees that help prevent accidents, creating a safety culture where we look at safety as a number one priority.’