Safety is fundamental to our operational integrity and the wellbeing of our workforce and communities. Preventing workplace incidents and fostering a proactive safety culture not only safeguards lives but enhances operational resilience. Through leadership-driven initiatives, risk management and continuous improvement, we strive to achieve our ultimate safety goal of zero harm across all operations.
Throughout the day, executive committee members visited BUs to engage with employees on critical safety issues, underscoring Exxaro’s commitment to safety excellence. The leadership safety day celebrated BUs that achieved multiple years without fatalities such as Leeuwpan’s impressive 35 years, Grootegeluk’s 12 and Matla’s seven years.
As we move forward, we will renew our commitment to making safety our top priority, every day and during every shift.
Safety always! All the way!
Key observations and actions from the leadership safety day:
Strengthening VFL as a proactive tool for monitoring and enhancing safety performance
Ensuring consistent hazard identification and control practices through refresher training
Refining the induction process to provide clear, digestible standards for new employees
Aligning business partners with Exxaro’s values and safety culture
The safety of our people is critical to achieving the objectives of our Sustainable Growth and Impact strategy and underpins our productivity and efficiency. Exxaro’s approach to embedding safety across our operations remains founded on:
Accountability and responsibility
While ultimate responsibility for safety lies with our people, accountability for their safety is built into leadership and governance structures and ultimately rests with the board. Site management at each BU oversees a high-risk task verification process to ensure that controls for high-risk activities and non-routine tasks are effective. Our BU management team investigates all incidents, and a skilled committee, headed by an independent chairperson, investigates fatalities and HPIs.
Regulatory compliance
We manage our mining operations in strict compliance with the MHSA, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (Act 85 of 1993) (OHSA) and DMRE safety regulations. Employees are encouraged to exercise sections 22 and 23 of the MHSA in terms of stopping work when it is perceived to be unsafe.
Beyond compliance
Exxaro collaborates with the Minerals Council to enhance operational safety. We adopt leading industry practices such as the Mine Health and Safety Council safety milestones. Our participation in the CEO Zero Harm Forum enables us to share safety learnings and benchmark with industry peers.
Matla, Leeuwpan and Grootegeluk are ISO 45001 certified.
CENNERGI
Cennergi’s windfarms comply with the OHSA and the LSP with the OHSA and MHSA. Cennergi’s head of operations reports safety incident investigation findings to the facilities’ steering committees and company boards. Site managers and health and safety representatives conduct investigations following reports from contractors. LTIs and medical treatment cases are immediately reported to the group health and safety department.
We actively manage safety risks through strict and consistent implementation of Exxaro’s safety focus areas:
Drive safety accountability through leadership-led engagements and forums, recognising safety excellence and reinforcing a zero-harm culture
Promote safety awareness via targeted campaigns, incident learnings and group-wide campaigns that are shared through platforms such as safety stand downs, BU safety indabas and toolbox talks
Enforce a zero tolerance approach to unsafe working practices through consistently enforcing adherence to Exxaro’s zero tolerance rules
Proactively identify and mitigate risks with robust controls during high-risk tasks to prevent incidents and enhance safety performance
We review our safety improvement plans annually to ensure the methods we use to achieve our safety focus areas are relevant and effective. We also review our safety targets every year, based on prior performance, and apply stringent management protocols, programmes and systems to maintain the highest safety standards.
In 2024, we initiated a comprehensive review of our health and safety strategy to strengthen the five safety focus areas strategy. The updated strategy, aimed at reinvigorating these pillars and principles, will be launched in 2025.
Our proactive approach to identifying, assessing and implementing effective controls to manage risks and opportunities aims to prevent incidents and enhance our safety performance. We strictly enforce adherence to non-negotiable safety rules to embed lifesaving behaviours across all operations.
We evaluate the effectiveness of our incident responses and embed learnings to prevent recurrence. We use an incident management standard to verify corrective actions and ensure meaningful learning from internal operations and industry-wide practices.
Ongoing safety campaigns reiterate our philosophy that every life counts and encourage proactive, preventive action to address safety-compromising behaviours.
Our various safety campaigns play a fundamental role in our efforts to ingrain safety as a personal value for all our employees across the group. We also provide comprehensive training to address safety risks, which includes:
Employees are encouraged to care for their own safety and the safety of their colleagues, and hold one another accountable for unsafe work practices.
To eliminate repeats, we investigate and communicate all incidents through group-wide platforms, including email updates, toolbox talks, mass meetings, safety stand downs, SMS notifications and noticeboards. Recurring themes inform toolbox talks, helping employees translate lessons into practical safety improvements.
The annual CEO safety summit and leadership safety day further reinforce safety fundamentals while providing a platform to recognise safety excellence.
CENNERGI
Cennergi’s annual safety indabas enhance safety practices, promoting collective responsibility and continuous improvement.
In addition to XXoro, we use bespoke apps to improve safety awareness. Employees can easily identify hazards and report unsafe behaviours, conditions and potential risks using our near miss reporting app and Mini-HIRA. The VFL app is also used to enhance on-site leadership presence and engagement.
| Exxaro |
CENNERGI |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Target | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | |||
| Fatalities | 0 | 0RA | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| HPIs | 1 | 4 | 5 | 0 | |||||
| LTIs | 10RA | 11 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| LTIFR | 0.05 | 0.06RA | 0.07 | 0.05 | |||||
| RA | Reasonable assurance provided. |
Our LTIFR stood at 0.06, slightly above the annual target of 0.05, yet still an improvement from the 2023 performance of 0.07. Lifting and material handling incidents constituted 40% of all reported incidents. This was followed by trackless mobile machinery-related incidents and those caused by slips, trips and falls, each accounting for 20% of the reported incidents. The completion of a high-risk shortwall move at Matla without injuries marked a significant safety achievement in 2024. We remain steadfast in our commitment to eliminate incidents and will intensify daily efforts to achieve zero harm.
We had noRA section 54(a) mining activity stoppages (2023: four).
Award for being a fatality-free business with over 10 000 employees
Award for reaching 10 800 fatality-free production shifts
First place in the section 34 EIA health and hygiene regulations compliance category
Award for the most improved noise in an opencast mine
Recognition for obtaining a zero LTIFR
Award for the most improved dust in an opencast mine
Award for reaching a remarkable 31 716 fatality-free production shifts
Recognition for obtaining a zero LTIFR
Award for reaching 13 712 fatality-free production shifts
CENNERGI
Cennergi demonstrated its commitment to safety excellence by maintaining a zero-fatality incident rate and zero LTIs in 2024. No reportable health and safety incidents were submitted to the DEL and quarterly external compliance audits scored Tsitsikamma and Amakhala Emoyeni at 95.9% and 95.1% respectively.
However, Cennergi’s main contractor reported two unrelated LTIs at Amakhala Emoyeni. Lessons learned from these incidents are used to enhance safety practices, including collaborating with the contractor to install new safety equipment on wind turbines.
The 2024 CEO safety summit, themed “Leave the world a better place than we find it”, highlighted critical safety, wellness and mental health issues, empowering employees and leadership to collaborate on actionable improvements. Frontline workers and supervisors led panel discussions that focused on identifying and resolving operational safety challenges.
Conducted on 17 October 2024 under the theme “Seven deadly signs”, our executive committee visited BUs to address the leading causes of fatalities and serious incidents. On-site VFL engagements further reinforced safety priorities and accountability, driving improved awareness.
Exxaro launched initiatives such as the supervisor indaba at Matla to address operational challenges identified at the safety summit. In addition, safety leaders across BUs were supported through targeted training programmes including a course for managers in risk management, legal liability and VFL.
CENNERGI
Cennergi fire safety collaboration
Following a turbine fire at a neighbouring windfarm, Cennergi implemented measures to enhance fire safety and emergency preparedness. These included introducing a fire management procedure, procuring a fire bowser with on-site training and fostering collaboration with neighbouring windfarms to strengthen collective emergency response capabilities.
Our primary focus in 2025 will be:
IR