SAFETY

BlueScope Steel has been on a safety journey for over a decade. We have now reached a point where we incur less than one injury resulting in lost time for every million hours worked. This Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) represents a 40-fold improvement since our drive for safety began, so these efforts have lowered the likelihood of injury for a considerable number of people. In the global steel industry, our safety performance is often cited as a benchmark and we are widely recognised as a leader in this area. However, tragically in May, a contractor was fatally injured while operating high-pressure water jet equipment at Port Kembla Steelworks.

Effective safety performance depends on very high levels of employee participation. Our people worked hard during the year to deliver a fourth consecutive LTIFR result of less than one. Our Medically Treated Injury Frequency Rate (MTIFR) also improved, dropping by 29 per cent to 4.0 incidents per million hours worked.

During the year, we acquired over 100 new sites and more than 4,000 new employees. We are implementing BlueScope Steel safety procedures across all our newly-acquired business sites. Our aim is to reach Zero Harm, a situation where no one is injured in the course of working for our Company.

In 2007/08, many excellent safety performances were achieved, with a number of BlueScope Steel businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America receiving external safety awards.

Asia

In Asia, our businesses continued to set very high safety standards. During the year BlueScope Steel Thailand passed 20 million hours without a Lost Time Injury (LTI), while our Vietnam business has worked six million hours LTI-free. Our China, Indonesia and Malaysia businesses also performed well. In China, Lysaght Langfang was selected as the best safety model of 2007 by the Local Safety Bureau, while in India, our coated steel project at Jamshedpur recorded one million hours without an LTI or MTI.

North America

In 2007/08, our upstream joint venture, North Star BlueScope Steel, achieved its best ever MTIFR of 5.6. The business was recognised by the Steel Manufacturers Association for Safety Performance and by the National Safety Council for Excellence in Safety. Our downstream Butler Construction business showed a strong improvement of 54 per cent, working two million hours without an LTI, while many other North American sites also achieved significant improvements in safety.

Australia and New Zealand

During the year, Port Kembla Steelworks achieved a record 19 million hours without an LTI, our Western Port operation recorded its lowest-ever LTIFR (0.76) and MTIFR (2.28) for a financial year and New Zealand Steel won the business category of the New Zealand Community Safety and Injury Prevention Awards.