At Vopak, we see it as our responsibility to provide a safe and healthy environment for our employees. Constantly improving the working conditions and monitoring the effectiveness of controls form the groundwork for our health and safety policy. What is more, we feel a strong responsibility to respect human rights. For this reason, we endorse the principles of the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also wish to enter into long-term relationships with our employees by maintaining a correct balance between factors that they regard as important in their work, such as job satisfaction, personal development, competitive employment conditions, and work-life balance.

A company wide employee survey revealed a very high engagement level and great enthusiasm by our workforce. The strategy is understood and welcomed by a very high number of our employees.
We are also proud to have kept the employee sickness absence at the low level of 2.1% for the second year in a row.

The number of accidents related to the number of labour hours, the Total Injury Rate (TIR) for own employees and contractors decreased further to 5.1 in 2008 from 5.7 incidents per million hours worked in 2007. It is with great sorrow that we have to report one fatality in these numbers. It underlines again the importance of safety as the top priority in our operations. The pursuit of zero incidents will be continued unrelentlessly.