Safety & Health

Every leather product, be it a shoe, a bag, or a car seat, is made by humans. It takes many experienced workers to create the perfect leather product, from operators in a chemical plant to leather manufacturers and craftsmen in a shoe factory. As every one of these people fulfils such an important role in our business, providing a safe and healthy workplace for our employees and contractors’ employees and ensuring the safe use of our chemicals are top priorities.

Health and Safety Management Systems

In 2022, our production entity in India obtained ISO 45.001 certification. Based on this reputable certification, all our entities now have world-class social management systems in place. Royal Smit & Zoon views the implementation of its social management system as a process of continuous improvement. According to the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle, the ISO 45.001 certification requires ongoing review of our practices, processes, and procedures, periodic internal and external audits to verify and check, and, where needed – improved implementation.

Our certifications

Safe Use of Chemicals

Being a chemical manufacturer, we consider the safe use of chemicals an absolute priority topic. Royal Smit & Zoon is involved in various training efforts and in creating models like the advanced Leather Working Group Protocol 7.2 to promote the safe use of chemicals. In Bangladesh, we have been involved in a 3-year training program, ‘Promoting Safe Use of Chemicals’ (PSUC), in collaboration with TEGEWA. The program ended in 2022; the final training reached over 3,700 leather industry employees (worker and floor level) and showed them how to work safely with chemicals.

We regularly organize workshops and hand out Personal Protection Equipment to increase focus on safety. We support leading leather industry organisations to strengthen the safe use of chemicals in their protocols.

Download the safety guidelines in various languages.

Customer health and safety

Another pivotal aspect of Health & Safety is customer health & safety, assuring the safe use of our chemicals. Our sales and technical teams are our ambassadors to spread this policy to our agent and distributor network as well as to our customers. Sharing our know-how and expertise with the leading industry organizations, with educational institutes in our industry, and in projects we run together with industry partners is another way to safeguard this further. Our commitment to ZDHC and eliminating restricted substances in the value chain, and promoting the Safe Use of Chemicals in Bangladesh, reflect our commitment to minimizing the adverse impact of our products on Health & Safety anywhere in the supply chain. In addition, we issue Safety Data Sheets with our products and implement safety instructions for our traveling team to share with downstream users.

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