Our annual Health and Safety Performance Report is an important long-term initiative of the Australian chemistry industry. It has provided detailed insights into the industry’s health and safety performance since 2000.
Chemistry Australia’s annual Health and Safety Performance Report is an important long-term initiative of the Australian chemicals industry. It has provided detailed insights into the industry’s health and safety performance since 2000.
Each year, the Report provides the data and insights that enables the Association and its members to understand and communicate our safety performance, identify emerging issues, and continuously improve health and safety outcomes for the people who work in our industry and the communities in which we operate.
By publishing and sharing our members’ health and safety data, we are able to demonstrate to governments, regulators and the broader community that risks associated with our sector are being effectively managed.
Our 2025 results show that Chemistry Australia members remain leaders in workplace health and safety, with safety outcomes that put us ahead of all major high-risk industries. Our members' injury rates remain well below the national target, reflecting the robust systems, processes and safety cultures that exist across our sector.
The Performance Report 2025 is now available to download.
We encourage members of our industry to share this report with their leaders and teams and use its findings to promote constructive conversations about health and safety in your workplace.
All Chemistry Australia members are invited to contribute to our next annual health and safety survey to strengthen our reporting, improve the quality of benchmarking and insights available to members, and to help demonstrate the collective commitment to maintaining our industry's high safety standards.
Highlights
- Zero fatalities
- Total injury rate of 1.67 per cent, well below the 3.5 per cent target
- Lowest mental health injury frequency rate recorded since reporting commenced in 2020
- Medical treatment injury frequency rate fell to 3.79, continuing its longer-term downward trend
- The Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate has reduced by almost 6 per cent compared to the 5-year average
- The five-year rolling average for lost time injuries increased slightly, highlighting an area requiring continued focus
- Manual handling injuries continue to dominate our medical treatment and lost time injuries
- Report data based on 23,054 employees and 44 million hours worked
Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy
In 2023, Chemistry Australia members achieved some excellent results and remains one of the safest groups in Australia.
The report commences a new decade of alignment with Safe Work Australia’s Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy, which focusses on reducing worker fatalities, injuries and illness.
Over the next 10 years, our approach will target specific injuries and key areas of interest:
- Zero fatalities
- Equal to or less than 3.5 per cent injury rate
- A reduction in the rate of serious injuries
Chemistry Australia will also measure and report mental health injury rates to better understand our performance in this critical area, while monitoring areas that require closer examination; Workdays Lost Per Employee (WDLPE), injuries related to age, and physical injuries.
The new strategy provides members with the opportunity to reflect anew on strategies to reduce the frequency of injuries, particularly in the most persistent areas for our sector.
We congratulate members on their outstanding results and continued leadership and commitment to the health of workers, communities and the environment.
Additional resources for participants
Every company that participates in the Health and Safety Performance Report receives a confidential Benchmarking Report.
This valuable tool allows members to benchmark their own results against peers, promote internal discussion, gain new insights and generate ideas to drive further improvements in their workplace.
