European safety policy strengthened

30 July 2009

Univar, a leading European company specialising in the sales, marketing, application and safe, efficient handling of a wide range of chemicals and ingredients, has announced that it has set a new corporate safety policy to standardise its explosion-proof forklift fleet in Europe using Pyroban technology. Pyroban is a leading authority on converting FLTs (forklift trucks) for working in flammable areas.

European safety policy strengthened

Univar has almost 40 different facilities across Europe handling significant quantities of flammable solvents and the company uses around 250 forklifts. Out of these, approximately 20% are used in either zone 1 or zone 2 potentially explosive atmospheres. The company has therefore decided to team up with Pyroban in order to strengthen its overall safety policy.

“Health and safety are of the utmost importance to us and we strive to meet and exceed legal requirements,” explained Martyn Bapty, project manager for Univar’s European operations team. “Handling flammable solvents using forklift trucks has always been a focal point for site safety policy because of their potential to ignite through energy or heat. We wanted to standardise the approach in line with our European-wide management system, U+, which requires each site to continually improve their Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality performance.”

In order to introduce the new Pan-European safety practice for all Univar operations managers, for the first time a bespoke training was organised at Pyroban’s headquarters in the UK.

“During the training Pyroban covered both theoretical and practical information: from the legal aspects of the ATEX directive to what operations managers need to know in order to fully understand the practical aspects that keep an operation safe. The team also witnessed the explosion of a small amount of gas, which acted as a powerful reminder of why safety is Univar’s number 1 priority. Our goal is to have every European site operating with Pyroban equipment.” Bapty commented.