The Kushiro Plant of the Hokkaido Business Division of Summit Agri-Business Corporation, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, received the Best Plant Award at the recent Kushiro-Nemuro Region Industrial Safety and Health Convention for its clean industrial accident record--it has not experienced a workplace accident since June 2003.

Summit Agri-Business Corporation is predominantly engaged in manufacturing and marketing of fertilizers and importing and marketing dairy materials. The clean record at the Kushiro Plant, one of the firm's four Japan plants, has been made possible thanks to the employees' daily and tireless efforts to promote safety and health at their workplace.

At Kushiro Plant, the following basic approaches have been applied in order to maintain safety: KY activities (identification of possible dangers), HHK reporting (reporting of incidents that could have resulted in serious injury) and "pointing and vocalizing (pointing with the forefinger in the direction of a place to which particular attention should be paid, while saying the name of the place aloud)." Daily, weekly and monthly assessments are conducted based on the Plant's safety and health promotion strategies, including plans for KY activities and the HHK reporting, to understand 1) what should be done, and in what ways; 2) any unsafe activities; and 3) the level of remaining risks. These efforts have helped employees maintain solid safety awareness in their work environments.

"On this occasion, we need to remind ourselves that there are no quick solutions to ensuring safety at work. We will make further efforts to improve risk assessment," said Kazuo Kodaka, Kushiro Plant Manager of the Hokkaido Business Division, Summit Agri-Business Corporation. "Based on the report on the safety diagnosis made by a workplace safety consultant, we are to make yet further improvements."