Every single detail under control

We prioritize the well-being of everyone who interacts with our production processes and products. Our safety culture encompasses everything and everyone: our employees and contractors, safe production processes, plants, transport, and environmental protection.

Safety in all areas

We care for our people, which is why we continuously enhance workplace safety for all employees. We achieve this through standardized and systematic procedures in designing complex processes, plants and facilities, supported by globally applicable regulations that ensure and continuously improve safety.

When incidents occur, we investigate thoroughly to prevent recurrence. We record and analyze work accidents to identify root causes and strengthen our prevention measures. Our ambitious target is zero employee injuries during work-related activities. For our reported accident figures, please refer to our annual report.

The handling, transport, usage, recycling and disposal of products must meet our strictest safety requirements. We incorporate regular product controls across all our operations, including a comprehensive assessment of potential health and environmental risks throughout the entire product lifecycle from initial research to final disposal.

Several of our products are subject to extensive information disclosure rules. Covestro also voluntarily provides additional information regarding safe interaction with our products and offers training sessions and courses. We continuously evaluate our products according to international standards and local regulations, considering new findings, their hazard potential and potential risks. These evaluations serve as a basis for appropriate risk management.

We demonstrate our responsibility for our products through our implementation of the global product strategy of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA). We produce Product Safety Summaries according to ICCA standards and make them publicly available.

Our specialists work closely with customers, traders, local authorities and communities in all areas of our business to ensure that our products can be handled safely.

When developing our product portfolio, we pay particular attention to new materials and technologies, seeking innovations in cooperation with scientists, customers and suppliers. We also provide information and advice on the use of new technologies. In this way, we can achieve environmentally related improvements within existing processes.

Our plants and processes are subject to continuous controls. They are adapted to incorporate advanced technology and thanks to an intelligent maintenance system, we aim at replacing parts before they even break. All units also meet the legal requirements for operators of industrial plants.

We want to design and operate our processes and plants as safely as possible to ensure that there are no unreasonable risks for employees, the local region, or the environment. We carry out in-depth and systematic safety reviews at regular intervals. We analyze each incident and each near miss or the smallest occurrence as to its causes and publish the results and any corrective measures group-wide in accordance with our corporate regulations.

The criteria were set up in such a way that even incidents that have no impact on employees, our neighbors or the environment are also captured, thus ensuring that they can be avoided in the future where possible. Safety Excellence, characterized by zero-accident mentality and proactive risk prevention, strategically enhances regional development by strengthening local capabilities through knowledge and technology transfer.

We ensure transport safety through our comprehensive seven-point plan. All these points share a specific aim: the safe transport of Covestro materials to protect people and the environment:

1. Correct behavior when transporting Covestro products
2. Safe loading and unloading processes
3. Consistent evaluation of logistics services
4. Transport risk management for the proactive prevention of risks during transportation before the transportation is carried out for the first time
5. Management of specifications to ensure adherence to all legal requirements and relevant industry guidelines
6. (Interactive) courses and training sessions in the fields of dangerous goods, cargo securing and product labeling
7. Active internal and external exchange of views and learning from mistakes

Our external logistics service providers are also selected according to a fixed process and regularly evaluated in line with high quality and safety standards. In every company division, there is one person who is responsible for checking the implementation of all regulations and who also acts as an expert contact for transport-related issues.

In the case of substances with a high hazard potential, we voluntarily record all leaks of 50 kilograms or more. It does not matter whether the substance was being transported by Covestro or by a third-party service provider.