Safety continued
Safety of installations
The Heineken Company has standards for the design of brewery equipment to help ensure safe and environmentally friendly installations. Knowledge and good practices are collected and communicated to continuously improve our performance. Industrial processes will always give rise to some nuisance for the neighbouring local communities. Our production units have procedures in place to reduce nuisance caused by, for example, noise and odour emissions. Despite our efforts, incidents have happened and complaints were filed. The number of complaints as registered by our units decreased from 84 in 2004 to 55 in 2006.
In 2006, 21 incidents were reported. In seven of those cases, fines were paid totalling €357,764.
The incidents relate most often to waste-water issues; there were 12 cases, ranging from exceeding effluent limitations to smell problems, a caustic spill and blockage of a storm water sewer. In addition, five ammonia-related incidents were reported (leakages and smell). Two cases of soil contamination have been reported: in one case it concerned small oil spills which were cleaned directly and the other case a cleaning agent contaminated the soil. The latter case is still under investigation.
