Mercuria’s HSE principles are expected to be followed by our employees and partners at all times and are fundamental to the entire Group’s business activities.  These principles are:   

• Mercuria seeks to provide a safe and healthy workplace for all (employees, contractors and the public).
• Mercuria is committed to ensuring ongoing compliance with all applicable rules, laws and regulations.
• Mercuria is committed to conducting business with high standards relating to health, safety and the environment.
• Mercuria commits to measure, record and review the company’s performance in terms of its Health, Safety and Environmental metrics; and use that information to guide its future efforts. 
• Mercuria is committed to contributing to the development of the local communities where it operates. 

To ensure these principles are closely followed and supported, Mercuria has dedicated HSE resources in place throughout the entire organization; from the Group’s leadership through to the practical “boots-on-the-ground” parts of our business.  

Emergency Response Plans (ERP’s) are in place for all our operating business. These plans are developed individually and reflect each business’ distinct operations, designed to satisfy the specific regulatory obligations of the jurisdictions in which they operate. We are continually expanding our set of ERP’s to achieve a robust, overarching system which enables Mercuria teams to monitor and respond to concerns and challenges in real time, and to address additional risks as they are recognized. 

While the specifics of document formats are necessarily bespoke to our different business activities, Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) generally exist as a component of Mercuria and our Assets’ overarching ERPs. ERPs and BCPs both are intended to provide frameworks for the orderly and systematic approaches that can be followed in a crisis situation.  ERPs have as their focus issues of safety and the protection of life, the environment and our physical assets.  In contrast BCPs have as their focus measures for continuing operations and restoring activities to normal practices. Both will offer advise in responding to immediate events to mitigate injury, damage or loss, followed by organized efforts to re-establish proper operations.  The plans also outline key roles with respective responsibilities as well as frameworks to set goals and objectives our organizations may look to achieve in response to a given incident.  The pandemic has seen these plans being successfully implemented across our organization, and has also highlighted their value as we continually review and build upon them. 

From our newest intern to our most experienced leader, Mercuria fundamentally believes that our employees represent our most valuable asset.  All employees and contractors at our work sites are therefore empowered to highlight a matter of concern if they perceive one and exercise Mercuria’s “Stop-Work Authority”.  Mercuria is keen that all employees understand they hold full authority, regardless of their position or level of experience within the organization, to openly express issues of safety concerns.  When a concern is raised the activity is paused while a senior staff member is made aware of the circumstance around the concern, and conducts an assessment to decide upon the validity of the concern and whether a change should be implemented, before the activity can safely resume. 

Mercuria assures all employees and contractors that when exercising this authority in good faith, they will have the full support of the company’s management.  Mercuria leadership will consult with the individual who raised the concern to ensure their perspective is understood, and share with them the steps being taken to address the issue.  As a matter of principle, Mercuria will not place pursuit of commercial objectives over our foundational values for work being conducted in a safe and compliant fashion. 

We similarly encourage all our employees and contractors to report upon any near miss events or where they observe something unsafe or creating an unaddressed hazard.  Through this reporting and the proactive steps that our operations can then put in place, we look to effectively manage our operational risks. 

In addition to the above, we also maintain and advise our employees upon their ability to make reports both to their supervisor, or if dictated by circumstances, separately outside of the organizational hierarchy and with the ability to report in confidence.  While endeavouring to maintain a workplace where communication and feedback is open and unfettered, we maintain and remind employees at least annually of additional options that concerns can be voiced.

HSE is a core element of the training provided within all our Assets.  While the training topics are broadly the same across our businesses,  special consideration is given to reflect the hazards which are unique to the work activities within each operation, such as spill prevention and management, and marine issues. The general safety topics which are included in the HSE training for our physical operations include:  

• Safe work permitting (both hot and cold work)  
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), eye and face/ hand/foot protection  
• Respiratory protection
• Lockout – Tag out (LOTO) for control of hazardous energy
• Noise exposure
• Heat / cold exposure
• Fall protection, walking and safe working surfaces
• Hazard communication / Hazardous and toxic chemicals in the workplace
• Injury and illness reporting and recordkeeping
• Near miss and unsafe condition reporting
• Machine guarding

Within our office environments we are working to similarly provide appropriate training and resource.  This includes: 

• Providing training for issues of workplace behaviour, security and threat management as appropriate with consideration of inappropriate behaviour or harassment, as well as crisis events such as extreme weather, fires, flooding, hostile persons or other threats of magnitude.
• Offering training to employees on providing basic first aid and CPR for the general management for bleeding, problems with breathing/choking, and other medical emergencies where aid can be given prior to emergency professionals arriving.
• For our offices where we normally have or expect a large number of persons, in addition to basic first aid equipment we have also installed AEDs.