In line with the Chemical Industries Association Guiding Principles for Sustainable Business Practices, Pentagon has developed a wide ranging set of objectives. These are integrated into the day-to-day business throughout Pentagon and are the basis of clearly defined improvement plans. Everyone in the organisation is involved, and progress is measured and reported for all to see.

Principles

• Clear leadership in process safety, with the focus on plant integrity, hazard and risk assessment, process safety awareness, and corporate oversight …. looking beyond legal compliance towards excellence.
• Maintaining on time in full delivery of all orders, while improving yields and ensuring that all products are manufactured right first time.
• Identifying and reducing waste streams to increase efficiency allowing us to reduce solvent and raw material usage.
• Improving energy efficiency by reducing the major areas of energy consumption, and eliminating leaks from utilities pipework.
• Maintaining regulatory compliance.
• Increasing the visibility of safety, and involving employees towards the goal of no major personal injuries or plant incidents.
• Creating a working environment that promotes team working, and rewards excellence so that we all strive to give our best.

We have made this a priority because we believe it is....
GOOD FOR BUSINESS
GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
GOOD FOR PEOPLE
GOOD FOR THE FUTURE

Highlights

Pentagon, in common with many chemicals manufacturers, consumes significant quantities of energy and raw materials, as well as generating substantial volumes of hazardous waste. Our waste minimisation teams are therefore constantly working to reduce, recycle and re-use this waste in order to lower costs and minimise our environmental impact.

Over the last 12 months our Halebank site has established an integrated solvent recovery operation from which a total of 1000 tonnes of solvent was recovered and re-used.

At Pentagon, we use statistical tools to analyse yield variance in order to identify opportunities to increase material conversion rates and reduce costs – more product for less.

Improved yields coupled to greater focus on maximising energy efficiency meant total energy consumption at Halebank was reduced from 53.2 to 40.5 GWhrs pa whilst production output was increased from 639 to 709 tonnes. The reduction in specific energy usage of 31.3% can be better illustrated by the absolute numbers in which a decrease of 24.9% in the total amount of energy equates to 2894 tonnes less carbon dioxide emissions.

Customer satisfaction through service and quality is paramount in Pentagon’s business strategy. Targeted improvements in productivity and quality have helped sustain schedule adherence of 99% for the past year with an overall Right-First-Time manufacture rate of 99.7%.

The people at Pentagon are crucial to success. The working environment increasingly promotes productivity ownership, employee engagement and development, so that all strive to give their best. Elected employees are involved in a Works Council. A Company newspaper is published frequently with business updates, and all employees actively take part in business workshops. A culture audit revealed that 90% of employees stated that they planned to be working for Pentagon in 12 months time.