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• Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to Associated British Foods’ Health, Safety and Environment (HS&E) Report for the year ending September 2006 which complements the ABF Annual Report and Accounts 2006. The information in this report encompasses all our 23 operating businesses and our 45,000 employees at the main operational sites in 30 countries. It includes for the first time recently acquired companies: the BTC Group and Innovative Cereal Systems companies within AB Mauri, and Protient Inc as part of ABF Ingredients. The safety and environmental contribution from Illovo Sugar Ltd. will be included in the 2007 HSE Report.

We firmly believe that ABF has a positive role to play in contributing to the quality of peoples’ lives by providing wholesome and nutritious foods, food ingredients, animal feedstuffs and quality affordable clothing. Sugar, tea, flour, bread, cereals, meat, dairy products and clothes are part of our daily lives all over the world and ABF plays an important part in making sure that these are produced efficiently and to a high quality.

Safeguarding our workforce and our products, consideration for our environmental impacts and ensuring legal compliance are core requirements for all our managers. Our HS&E priorities are to:

• Reduce the number of workforce injuries and their severity;
  
• Continue improving our management of key HS&E risks;
  
• Prevent incidences of non-compliance;
  
• Continue independent auditing of our operational sites;
  
• Continue independent verification of our key HS&E data.

Over the last year we have continued to focus on practical ways to improve our health & safety performance and reduce our environmental impacts. In accordance with ABF’s decentralised approach to running our business, progress has been driven by our operating companies in response to the needs they have identified as most important. There has been excellent performance by many of the operating companies. For example: 60 out of 236 factories and 78 out of 142 retail sites had a whole year without any reportable injuries, the AB Mauri sites at Uruguay and Tucuman halved their lost time injuries and the Allied Bakeries sites reduced their reportable injuries by 24%. Companies have been exploring ways to reduce their environmental impact, particularly by increasing energy efficiency. There has been an increase in the number of sites gaining certification from their national authorities for their safety and environmental risk management systems.

We aim to improve our HS&E performance even more over the coming year.

ABF takes its responsibility to the environment very seriously and constantly seeks to control the risks and comply with all applicable legislation. In particular ABF is concerned about energy and resource conservation, emissions to air, water consumption and releases to water and the disposal of solid wastes. As part of our renewable energy strategy, British Sugar has started to construct a major bioethanol plant at Wissington in Norfolk. The plant is due to start production in 2007 and will process sugar beet into 55,000 tonnes of bioethanol each year, providing a sustainable energy source for over 1 million cars. This bioethanol will be the first to be produced in the UK from UK-grown crops.

If you would like to comment on this report, please email ABFinfo@abfoods.com.

George Weston
Chief Executive