APM Terminals Apapa sets new safety record

APM Terminals Apapa has set a new safety record at the port, as it recorded 400 days no Lost Time Injury (LTI).      

No Lost Time Injury (LTI), which is a key indicator of the effectiveness of an organisation’s safety programme, means no injury was sustained on the job by an employee or contractor that resulted in the person being away from work due to his or her injury. 
     
This was made known at an event to mark the company’s 2022 Global Safety Day in Lagos, with the theme ‘We Learn And We Adapt,” which was attended by several stakeholders including the representatives of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian Police Force, Hapag Lloyd, Pacific International Lines and Maersk, among others. 

The Regional Managing Director, Africa and Europe at APM Terminals, Igor Van Den Essen, who was on a visit to Nigeria, commended the Apapa team for the major safety milestone, charged them to sustain and improve on the record.     

Global Safety Day

He said: “As we discuss safety while we observe Global Safety Day, we continuously highlight how deeply it impacts our operations and our entire company. Being in an asset-heavy industry and due to the nature of our operations, we consider safety to be non-negotiable to us, our people and our partners across the port logistics ecosystem and it is also one of the three pillars of our strategy “Safer, Bigger, Better”. 

While commending the employees, the Country Managing Director of APM Terminals Nigeria, Klaus Laursen, reinforced the importance of maintaining safety at the ports every day.

APM Terminals Apapa’s Terminal Manager, Steen Knudsen, encouraged employees to celebrate themselves as they had achieved a huge milestone of going through a whole year without any injury recorded, while urging employees to always remain safety conscious. 

“All of us here should encourage the practice of coming forward to report incidents to ensure a more robust safety. I want you to also know that safety is not only for today; safety is tomorrow, next week, and so forth.

Increased Efficiency

“We want to be more efficient; we want to give our customers a better experience and deliver more to the Nigerian economy. We want to do this while ensuring that everyone goes home safe after work. In achieving this, learning from the past is critical. We have a lot to learn from happenings in the past. The first stage in any improvement is to realise where you are coming from and improve from there,” he said. 
     
Knudsen added that over the past 16 years since it commenced operations, APM Terminals Apapa had made substantial investment not only in equipment and facility upgrade, but also in continuous training and manpower development.

“We are not only looking at functional skills – I mean skills that enable us to do our jobs more efficiently and faster, we also look at how we develop our supervisory levels, managerial levels, and front line levels to ensure that we grow the company to where we want it positioned for the future,” he said.