How is Anglo American Enhancing Mining Safety?

Anglo American is enhancing mining safety by transforming its leadership policies and implementing new technology.

Since its beginning, the company has been dedicated to building sustainable value across its supply chain, with safety playing a key role in this journey.

Through hard work and advancements, Anglo American is protecting its workers whilst ensuring critical materials are still made available around the world.

About Anglo American

Anglo American is a leading global mining company founded in 1917 with a mission to responsibly produce copper, premium iron ore and crop nutrients.

Ernest Oppenheimer built Anglo American in South Africa, with the key principle of creating sustainable value.

The company quickly grew, establishing routes outside of South Africa.

Headquartered in London, it now has mining operations around the world, with bases across Europe, southern Africa, North and South America and Australia. 

Through its work, it improves living standards and food security due to its decarbonisation work and sustainable products.

Its value chain decisions are driven by sustainability and innovation, with a dedication to operating safely, efficiently and responsibly. 

Through collaboration with its business partners and stakeholders, Anglo American works to unlock long lasting value for shareholders, communities and countries. 

With a focus on safety, Anglo American is driving innovation to ensure its workers can go home every day, unscathed.

Putting safety first

Safety of the people is one of Anglo American's six values - in fact, it is the most important one.

Its innovative sustainability approach, FutureSmart Mining, also has an emphasis on keeping people safe at work.

Anglo American is focusing on improving people's lives by transforming mining.

Part of this includes the introduction of more remote and automated technologies, meaning workers can operate mining without putting themselves in harms way.

It aims to increase safety for both its workers and for those who rely on key products that the mined metals or minerals form.

Anglo American's key values ensure it is constantly striving to ensure people work with vigilence and consideration in mind, ensuring they keep themselves and others safe. 

Key values:

• Safety - everything goes into ensuring employees stay safe from harm 
• Care and respect - everyone looks out for each other, making sure they do not ignore wrongdoings in any form
• Integrity - employees act with honesty and transparency
• Accountability - the company takes responsibility for its actions and learns from experiences or mistakes
• Collaboration - colleagues and stakeholders collaborate to achieve positive outcomes
• Innovation - seek other perspectives to transform the business through innovation

"Safety is our number one value and always our first priority. We continue to make progress towards our goal of zero harm, with a further major improvement in the first half on what was our lowest-ever injury rate in 2024," says Duncan Wanblad, CEO of Anglo American.

"No fatality is ever acceptable, and we have to all learn from every incident across the industry. Keeping our workforce safe is our primary focus and comes first in everything that we do.

Innovation at the forefront

Smart technology innovation which removes risk or keeps people out of harm's way remains a priority for Anglo American. Using a data driven approach to examining business risks and quantifying risk-reduction benefits.

Automation has also been a major factor in helping people stay safe on site. Drones and robotics have been trialed across sites for confined-space inspections, meaning employees can remotely test these spaces and avoid exposure to harmful substances and avoid risk of entrapment.

"Alongside our continued use of innovative technologies to help make Anglo American a safer and a healthier place to work, we are building an ever-stronger safety culture, based on the established concept of Visible Felt Leadership," added Duncan. 

Visible Felt Leadership (VFL) is a leadership approach focusing on engagement and connection, which leads to action. It helps employees feel supported and helps create a strong safety culture as it allows for a more open stream of communication. 

Through these innovations and leadership techniques, Anglo-American is working to completely eradicate risk from its mining processes, taking necessary steps to learn from past incidents to prevent re-occurances.

Its determination to keeping people safe is ensuring employees feel confident going to work each day. 

Anglo American is enhancing mining safety and proving itself as a leader in employee care through this people-first approach.