My First Six Months at Greenvale AP

By Stuart Caroline (Head of HSE)

Its hard to believe that I have been with Greenvale for just over six months and I ask myself where has that time gone? This tells me that I am in a role that I thoroughly enjoy, working for a company where our goals and ambition for HSE are aligned and with a committed and dedicated management team that is always ready to support and improve the health safety and well-being of their teams. The most challenging parts of the role have been to identify how to bring all areas of the business together, sharing knowledge and best practice and to ensure GVAP meets all its legal and moral duties and to identify how to implement change within the business.

During these six-plus months I have been able to visit all the GVAP sites and begin building relationships with all key people and the wider teams - and this now includes supporting the Jersey Royal Company. I have had the opportunity to review HSE standards and levels of compliance across the business and develop a strategy that includes short, medium, and long-term objectives that will deliver a successful Health and Safety Culture within the business.

Every journey has a starting point and I have been able to review the Health and Safety Management System and implement a new and fit-for-purpose Health and Safety Management System that starts with a revised (but robust) set of policies and procedures, the development of a digital Accident, Incident and Near Miss reporting and investigation system that gives us the ability to drill down to the root causes as well as standardising the investigation process. During site visits, we identified key areas of development for each site, which led to the creation of the

GVAP Health and Safety Balanced Score Card (strategy) and the Top 5 HSE priorities for each site. Additionally, and with fantastic support from the IT Team, we have been able to launch the Health and Safety Hub where all Health and Safety related information is held and can be obtained and managed in a more user-friendly way. Working closely with the management teams we are currently reviewing and updating our Risk Assessments, identifying areas of improvement within each area of the business to ensure that our teams feel safe when at work. Each manufacturing site is now fully compliant in all areas where there are statutory requirements such as Fire, Noise and Dust, DSEAR, Legionella, etc. and again from this we have now developed a clear improvement action plan to deliver the improvements recommended by the various auditors. Safety performance on each site has improved, including, Hazard/Near Miss Reports which are up year on year and Minor Accidents are trending lower year on year.

So, where are we now?

We are now able to deliver what we say we are going to do and to move to the next level of safety, consolidating our performance in readiness for the challenge of achieving the ‘Gold Standard’ of Health and Safety Management and Performance. Along with this we are working closely with JRC to embed (where appropriate) the GVAP Standards, Policies and Procedures so that we are all working collaboratively and collectively to deliver our goals and objectives. We also continue to work with the Seed, Trading and PSOL teams to develop a set of tangible outputs that buy in to the main GVAP processes and procedures. Finally, we would not be where we are now and planning to deliver the next stage without the fantastic support I have received for the Directors, Senior Management Teams and the wider teams and I look forward to being part of reaching our fine Health and Safety destination.