LyondellBasell is one of the world’s largest plastics, chemical and refining companies. The Company manufactures products at 55 sites in 18 countries.
Our British Carrington site is located approximately 10 miles from the City of Manchester and covers an area of 300 acres. The Carrington site began operations in 1949, and today is one of only two UK based plants supplying the Polypropylene (PP) market. It produces a wide variety of products for use in carpet fibres, ropes and textiles, moulded products such as food containers, crates, chairs, and film for many packaging applications. “We are a significant producer of PP, the most commonly used polymer. The evolution of this business over the past years has been a challenge that we have met successfully,” said the Carrington Site Manager, Laurent Hautier.
Everyday excellence
The Carrington site has applied a tireless individual and collective pursuit of everyday excellence in Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) and manufacturing efficiency. The site has made great strides in all aspects of Operational Excellence, with superior results in Occupational Safety, Process Safety & Environmental Performance. Site Manager Hautier continues: “Our goal is to achieve zero process safety incidents, while focusing equally on process safety and occupational safety. This goal is attainable due to the high level of commitment given by senior leadership, corporate groups and the site management team. The site has had no process safety incidents for more than four years. The latest achievement came in April 2015, when we reached 2,000,000 work hours without a recordable injury – a period of more than five years.”
World Class Reliability
The key to Operational Excellence is world class reliability which the PP plant achieves. Significant effort has been made over several years to increase energy efficiency and monomer utilisation including additional capital expenditures in 2014. The site also invests each year in HSE and Responsible Care projects. This has been particularly important as a result of several plant closures requiring infrastructure and utility rationalisation at each stage. Plant output is linked to the feed from the single Monomer supplier (Essar – Stanlow Refinery) with whom a strong partnership has been developed along the years to secure the chain Propylene (Monomer) – Polypropylene (Polymer).
Our people are key
In addition, we recognize that people are our key assets and have been recruiting for future succession planning. We have identified key functions and teams within our organisation that we believe are most ‘at risk’ of losing skills, knowledge and competence within the next few years, mainly due to anticipated retirements. We are working with an external partner to initiate a bespoke apprenticeship programme. This will allow us to invest in coaching, mentoring and developing new talent into the organisation whilst offering opportunities for apprentices to underpin the skills, knowledge and competency that we currently have. “Overall the dedication and hard work of each and every one of the Carrington site has been tremendous. But performing at our individual and collective best every day is what will continue to enable the success of LyondellBasell” said Site Manager Hautier.
Winning three Chemical Industry Awards
In June the winners of the 2015 Industry Awards have been announced at a special celebration of the Chemical Industry Association (CIA) in Newcastle. The three industry awards won by LyondellBasell Carrington are the Manufacturing & Resource Efficiency Award, the Responsible Care Award for Process Safety Leadership and the special CIA Company of the Year Award. “We have been building a healthy chemical company and we are thrilled to win three CIA awards in just one year. Our UK Carrington team really worked hard to make the change and become a profitable and efficient site. With our commitment to the corporate programs Everyday Excellence and GoalZero, we were able to sustain a strong HSE performance over the last years, which is mandatory for gaining or celebrating any success” said Laurent Hautier.
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