Stainless Steel Materials
- Mt Keith (Australia) sulphide ore prior to crushing, grinding and flotation to recover nickel as concentrate.
BHP Billiton is the world’s third largest primary nickel producer and a major producer of cobalt. The Stainless Steel Materials CSG primarily services the stainless steel industry through its wide range of high-quality nickel products. In addition, the CSG supplies nickel and cobalt to other markets including the chemicals and specialty alloy industries.
Stainless Steel Materials nickel operations include the Cerro Matoso mine and ferronickel smelter in Colombia, QNI Yabulu refinery in north Queensland, Australia, and the extensive Nickel West assets in Western Australia, including the Mt Keith and Leinster operations, the Kalgoorlie nickel smelter and concentrator, and the Kwinana nickel refinery. The Ravensthorpe Nickel Operations, an integrated mine and primary processing facility, also in Western Australia, is now in an advanced construction phase.
2006 Sustainability Performance Overview
Key aspects of Stainless Steel Materials' sustainability performance for the reporting period 2005/06 were:
- Regrettably, in February 2006, a contractor at our Leinster Operation was fatally injured when an explosive prematurely detonated during the loading of a cannon to release a blocked ore-pass.
- We began i ntegrating the BHP Billiton HSEC management systems, including the HSEC Management Standards and Fatal Risk Control Protocols, into former WMC assets including Nickel West.
- Conducting Process Hazard Analyses on the most critical areas of our operations has been the initial focus area of our implementation of Process Safety Management throughout Stainless Steel Materials’ sites.
- Our safety leadership improved, with dramatic increases in leadership interventions in the field. This provides the opportunity for management to demonstrate that safety is an integral part of the business and to set standards of performance for all employees to follow.
- We made a significant improvement in HSEC incident reporting across the organisation, which has provided many opportunities of free learnings that were used to improve our HSEC performance.
- Our Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate increased by three per cent.
- No significant environmental or community incidents were recorded.
- All controlled sites maintained their ISO 14001 certification.
- We develope and implemented a Community Participation Team (CPT) at each Nickel West operational site to administer the distribution of Nickel West community funding. The CPT supports communications between each site and their local community, provides a transparent decision-making process for the administration of community funding and is governed by defined guidelines. The CPT meets on a quarterly basis at each site and reviews applications for funding. Each team consists of representatives from the operation as well as the community.
- Twenty-six families were relocated as part of the mining area expansion of Cerro Matoso (Colombia). A participative strategy was developed in accordance with the World Bank Operational Directive on Involuntary Resettlement, which resulted in new land lots, housing and community infrastructure for the affected families. Construction activities provided employment during the process, and the relocated families are now self-sustaining, living off the production of their land plots.
- Read more: Stainless Steel Materials 2006 Environmental Data Summary.
2007 Sustainability Outlook
Looking ahead for the Stainless Steel Materials CSG, a focus on the BHP Billiton Key Sustainability Challenges will include the following:
Eliminating Fatal Risks
- Continuing to provide strong HSEC leadership in the field
- Continuing to implement Process Safety Management to further understand the risk to personnel and implement strategies to manage that risk.
Sustainable Community Development and Closure of Operations
- Continuing to align the Nickel West operations (Australia) with the BHP Billiton management system, including the Closure Standard
- Introducing a comprehensive Indigenous participation strategy at Nickel West; this will be the driver for a comprehensive indigenous engagement project for the Northern Goldfields in partnership with government, industry and community
- Continuing the foundation programs in Colombia and utilising this as the benchmark for new operations in developing countries.
Access to and Management of Resources
- Advancing strategies to reduce the impact of skills shortage in the resource industry and creating opportunities for job seekers in the future. The commodities boom has created a major skills shortage in many parts of the world, which is having a direct impact on our capability to develop projects
- Focusing efforts on water recycling, in response to water remaining a critical resource.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Develop and implement energy efficiency and greenhouse gas management plans to provide management focus to these areas. These plans will be aligned to the 5-year targets.
Occupational and Community Health
- Ensuring we have adequate exposure baselines at our operations
- Maintaining our continued vigilance in the proper management and education of our workforce about the presence of potentially harmful compounds in many of our nickel operations. This follows the REACH regulatory initiative on chemicals in the European Union that resulted in the reclassification of some nickel compounds as Category 1 carcinogens, Category 2 mutagens and reproductive toxicants.
