Management of dangerous goods
 

The year 2021, has undoubtedly been an important milestone on the path to excellence in the company’s operations with hazardous materials.

Continuing with the Global DG Assessment program, this year's efforts have focused on rolling a dangerous comprehensive goods training program defined in 2020.

Within the framework of this initiative, more than 500 branch supervisors in 67 countries received advanced training on applicable national and international dangerous goods carriage and storage legislation and Kuehne+Nagel's internal procedures and guidelines for hazardous materials. Subsequently, a full risk assessment of the situation at each branch was carried out, including complete control of dangerous goods inventories, safety data sheets, IT systems, licenses, insurance policies, and internal work procedures to ensure full compliance with current regulations within our internal DG guidelines.

At the same time, improvements were made to the incident reporting system for dangerous goods. The corporate Dangerous Goods Incident tool, previously used only to report severe incidents, was enhanced to accommodate minor occurrences and near misses, which were being reported through different procedures and tools until this moment. This will contribute to a better overview of all incidents with hazardous materials and improved coordination of preventive and corrective actions.

All the actions mentioned are aimed not only at guaranteeing the safety of all operations with dangerous goods, but also at improving the availability and visibility of these types of services and opening up new specialty business opportunities for the whole Kuehne+Nagel network.

Dangerous Goods incidents
In 2021, seven dangerous goods incidents were reported. None of them caused any personal injury, environmental or asset damage, as the security protocols in place were followed. In two cases, employees and/or third parties required a medical check due to exposure to the substance, being discharged without any treatment.

Incidents classified as severe cause of personal injury, environmental damage or require the involvement of emergency services (fire brigade, ambulance, police) or the Authorities.