Northland's Fonterra Kauri site wins in-house health and safety award

Fonterra's dairy factory at Kauri. Photo/Michael Cunningham

Fonterra's Kauri site has won the Health and Safety Cup at the dairy company's annual awards ceremony which recognises the best-performing manufacturing sites across the country.

The north Whangarei factory has had a "great" safety record over the past 12 months including no recordable injuries.

Fonterra's Best Site Cup has been running annually for the past 11 years and Kauri has been named as the co-operative's best performing dairy site in the area of health and safety for 2017.

The awards showcase excellence in dairy manufacturing across a range of categories from safety to sustainability, people to productivity.

Criteria for the award also included contractor/employee loss time from injuries, safe home audit results, proactive improvement initiatives, time to complete actions (responsiveness to risks and issues), support to other sites with health and safety, evidence of achieving a shared learning culture and adopting health and safety learnings from other sites.

Rowan Hartigan, Northland operations manager - Kauri, said leadership from everyone on site to stay safe was paying off.

"In the past 12 months we had no recordable injuries, not only for our own employees but also the contractors we work with.

Rowan Hartigan, Fontera's Northland operations manager - at the Kauri dairy factory. Photo / Supplied

"Winning this award is a great source of pride for the whole team and recognises the hard work everyone puts in to keep each other safe."

Robert Spurway, chief operating officer - Global Operations, said The Best Site Cup recognises the outstanding efforts of staff and their commitment to delivering on the goal of being the world's most trusted source of dairy nutrition.

"Successful sites not only deliver exceptional results in their own right; they are actively engaged with their communities and, importantly, are involved in sharing their success with the entire co-operative to help embed best practice across the business as a whole.

"The Health and Safety Cup is one of the most important awards we give out because establishing healthy and safe environments across our sites is paramount.

"We want our people to return home from work safely every day, everywhere. Kauri has been recognised this year for setting the benchmark in health and safety."