The EIGA’s annual report provides an overview of the safety performance of the industrial and medical gases industry for the past calendar year and a comparison against previous years.

For the first time, the Annual Report contains data related to contractors operating for EIGA’s member companies.

The collection of these data is new and will become a stable process allowing to compare safety performances of contractors with member companies internal activities.

In the future, the trend of contractors’ safety performance will also be available, giving the chance for a deeper and more detailed analysis and more focused and effective actions at industry level.

Summary and interpretation

From a general point of view, some considerations can be made related to 2020 work injuries statistics:

· Road transport remains the area at most risk of high severity incidents, as confirmed by the fatalities reported in 2020. The efforts to support and introduce technology enhancements as well as improvements to collect and analyse data generated by transport activities are and will be a crucial area of all EIGA member companies.

· An overall improvement of safety performance among EIGA member companies can be observed in 2020. Both LTI and RWI frequency rates of internal employees were in 2020 at the lowest ever values; next years will tell us if this can become the beginning of a stable trend of improvement.

To further improve safety performances and stabilize a reduction trend, the challenges remain the same as in the previous years:

· To work on Human Factors, with a solid and systemic approach that promotes effective leadership, coaching and engagement, thus allowing to promote optimal behaviours at all levels;

· To share and disseminate knowledge and best practices, especially among contractors and smaller companies, through documents, training materials and new tools like e-learning modules