Charter aims for all of our operating sites to use EHS management systems to implement policies and drive performance improvement. Significant progress has been made in achieving this objective in recent years.
In 2008 ESAB became the first international company to be jointly certified to ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 for the entire organisation. In 2009 this was extended to include the Romar automation business, acquired in 2008, with factories in Singapore and China.
Howden continued to make progress with external certification of its manufacturing and servicing operations in 2009. At the middle of 2010 only the Brazilian operation and the new acquisition in Australia (Austcold) remain to be certified. These should be fully certified by mid-2011.