In November 2021, RoyOMartin-Plywood, in Chopin, La., was honored with the APA – The Engineered Wood Association 2020 3-Year Safety Award (2018-2020), First Place, Division I. APA President Mark Tibbetts was on hand to present the award.
“Visiting different mills I’ve observed a lot of safety cultures, but [RoyOMartin’s] is fabulous,” Tibbetts stated. “You work twice the number of hours of other mills and yet still have about four-times better safety record.”
Hours worked (1,727,130) at the plywood facility were the highest (approximately 2.4 times more than the average hours worked) of the 13 plywood mills evaluated. The mill’s Weighted Incident Rate (WIR) and Total Incident Rate (TIR) were also both significantly lower than the averages of the other mills.
“The ownership of our safety culture is being pushed from the floor level up because of our positive and dedicated safety leaders,” RoyOMartin Vice President of Plywood Jeremy Burford said. “Every year we make a big step forward, but until we can reach that milestone of operating continuously without a single employee suffering, we haven’t reached our goal.”
“On behalf of our board and our shareholders, I thank you for being the safest plywood plant in North America. It highlights the values that make our company a great place to work.”
– Roy O. Martin III, Chairman, CEO, and CFO
“Our Total Incident Rate (TIR) this year is half of what it was last year. It’s not yet zero as a company, but we have several of our operating units that have been at zero for the last 12 months.”
– Terry Secrest, Executive Vice President of Manufacturing and Sales
