Safety

Safety is our number one priority and we operate by the ethos that “if something is not safe, do not do it”. All employees are systematically trained to minimise risk while ensuring efficiency. Audits, both internal and external, are conducted at regular intervals to ensure that all safety measures are in place and are being followed.

KCM is a member of the British Safety Council and is regularly audited by the British Standards Institute (BSI). International accreditations and certifications include:

• Member of British Safety Council (BSC)
• 4 Star Rating on the British Safety Council 5 Star Occupational Health and Safety Audit (2013)
• Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Services (OHSAS) 18001 Certification
• Zambia Federation of Employers 1st Prize in Safety and Occupational Health (2010)
• Golden Peacock Award, 2008

Health

As part of occupational health monitoring, all employees must undergo a complete physical and medical check-up before joining KCM. In addition, regular health check-ups for diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are conducted and appropriate counselling is provided to the affected employees.

Environment

At KCM we understand that mining operations have various implications on the environment. KCM inherited mines and processing assets that had been in operation for many decades and had many legacy environmental issues. Since Vedanta’ acquired KCM, series of actions have been taken to address many of the inherited environmental issues. Today, all our processes are fine-tuned to ensure minimal environmental pollution and damage.

We have in place a comprehensive and well-funded programme designed to address legacy environmental issues. Particular focus has been placed on the areas that most affected the surrounding communities when modernising infrastructure to local and global industrial standards.

As part of KCM’s US$ 2.9 billion investment programme, several environmental management projects were completed, including:

• Commissioning a new smelter, increasing sulphur capture and energy efficiency with a highly-automated plant to the cost of US$ 500 million. The Nchanga smelter, which replaced the inherited older Nkana smelter, has one of the highest sulphur capture performances in the world with >99.6% of the sulphur captured; thus ensuring limited air pollution. The new smelter has reduced fossil fuel consumption by 70%.
• Commissioning new concentrators at both Nchanga and Konkola, with new machinery to achieve ‘zero discharge’ operations to ensure no process discharge to the environment at a cost of over US$ 230 million.
• Revamping the piping and dam catchment for hydrometallurgical processing, reducing run-off in areas most responsible for discharges, to the cost of US$ 30 million and US$ 40 million respectively.
• Underground rehabilitation for water handling and pumping, decreasing total suspended solids (TSS) in the water discharged from the Konkola mine, to the cost of US$ 20 million.