The Salalah Methanol Company (SMC) has achieved 3 million tonnes of methanol production on February 22. This is the first such achievement since the plant startup in May 2010. This milestone was achieved in less than three years which is a world class performance for a new plant. Awadh bin Hassan al Shanfari, CEO of Salalah Methanol Company, congratulated all the employees and said that he is very proud of this success and strongly believed that this achievement is a testament to the work culture based on hard work and commitment to teamwork, personal ownership of systems and facilities and continuous improvement.
He continued that SMC has made great achievements in different areas in year 2012 also. He informed about the safety performance being impressive with no recordable LTI reported last year and it is expected to complete 2 million man-hours without LTI by April 2013. He said SMC places the highest priority on the health and safety of the employees and the contractors working at site and believed that all injuries are preventable. SMC continually strive to improve and enhance the safety management systems to maintain an injury-free workplace. He talked about the management safety walks, safety committee and regular mock drills in order to prepare ourselves for emergency preparedness.
On the production front, he informed that around 1.1 million tonnes of methanol was produced last year which was higher than the budgeted production target. The energy per ton of methanol was also lower than the budget and the design value which also means less CO2 emissions. He talked about the various ongoing and future improvements programmes, like Operational Excellence, Corporate Risk Management, Enterprise Performance Management System (EPMS), Integrated Management System (ISO 9001/14001/18001) etc, being implemented to improve the processes and enhance the company performance.
On people front, he informed that the Omanisation rate is currently 62 per cent which indicates SMC’s commitment to develop Omanis by giving them the best level of experience and expertise. On the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), he said that as a caring organisation, SMC believes in meeting all the stakeholders to pave a common path towards sustainable community development and find out what more can be done to improve the lives of the people. He informed about the 20 CSR Initiatives approved last year and said that SMC will have similar budget for this year. All approved initiatives were geared towards building Human Capacity, Community Affairs and Sponsorship and Donation.
In order to create awareness in the society about the company, SMC organised site visits to plant, held road shows in different Wilayat’s and highlighting the details about SMC through print and electronic media. This will be on a continuous focus in future as well. He was happy to share the various recognitions received from external party’s i.e. other manufacturers, benchmarking studies and during conferences during the last 3 years. Finally, he said that by working in partnership with our employees and stakeholders, our goal is to create safer workplace for the employees and make a difference for the communities by contributing in their growth.
The company was incorporated in February 27, 2006 and is solely owned by Oman Oil. The company manages and operates a methanol plant located in Salalah Free Zone with an investment of $900 million. Oman Trading International Ltd (OTI) is the Off-taker of SMC’s methanol production and handles the marketing of the product globally.
