OUR APPROACH TO ENSURING HEALTH AND SAFETY
Given the high-risk nature of the mining process, prioritising health and safety is essential to protecting our people and ensuring the overall success of our operations.
A healthy, satisfied, and motivated workforce is key to driving the growth of our Company. We seek to achieve this objective by implementing our Health and Safety Policy. Practical measures are adopted, wherever possible, to avoid workplace accidents, eliminate occupational health hazards, and support employee well-being.
Q1 2026 Highlights
0
Work-related fatalities
2025: 0
0.55
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR)
2025: 0.97
Health, safety and wellbeing focus areas
Identifying, assessing, and controlling risks
Hochschild implements a systematic risk management approach to ensure a safe working environment across all our mine sites, supported by our Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Management System. This management system follows best practice, in line with recognised international practices and the legal requirements of the countries in which we operate, and applies to all sites, to our own employees and contractors alike.
The OHS Management System of our operating mine sites is externally certified on an annual basis to ensure compliance. In early 2026, we received the DNV Level 8 rating in the Inmaculada and San Jose mine sites, reflecting the robustness of our system. In our Brazilian operation, Mara Rosa, our first external audit was conducted in early 2026, with a Level 4 rating. You can find the DNV ISRS certificates here.
As part of best practice, the Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment, and Control Implementation process (IPERC, for its acronym in Spanish) is central to our OHS approach and conducted continuously at two different levels:
- The baseline IPERC assesses hazards and risks annually or after significant incidents or safety deviations; and
- The continuous IPERC is conducted daily by each worker at the beginning of their shift to identify the hazards they will face in their programmed activities and the adequate controls that they will need to implement to abate the identified risks.
Investigating and Learning from incidents
We remain committed to health and safety by continuing to promote the improvement of all activities and assess the potential occurrence of HPEs, which are events that could have caused serious injury and therefore include near misses as well as lost time events.
In the event of an HPE occurring, our CEO leads a meeting to conduct a thorough investigation and develop a corrective action plan, including the COO, Vice President of People and Corporate Affairs, Country Managers, site managers, and the corporate safety department. The site leader where the HPE occurred presents the investigation, and the Committee contributes the root cause analysis and proposed corrective action plan. The lessons learnt are then conveyed by site managers at other operations to their respective units.
Incidents that are minor in nature are investigated promptly and appropriate response measures are implemented.
Embedding a safety-first culture
We ensure the safety of employees at our operations via stringent controls, training and prevention programmes. Our workers are encouraged to remove themselves from work situations that they believe could cause injury or illness. These decisions are protected by a well-established “right to refuse or stop unsafe work” policy. We also foster a "no blame" culture to encourage our workers to report hazards or hazardous situations.
Across all our mining units, we convene joint management-worker safety committees, where members are elected by all personnel. These committees meet monthly to review health and safety developments and incident investigations, as well as approve the annual safety plan, training plan and internal regulations. Management also conducts discussions on health and safety with worker representatives and trade unions.
Employee welfare
We are committed to an integrated approach to employee welfare, supporting our people’s health and wellbeing and ultimately improving employee motivation and productivity. To ensure this, we have dedicated teams of health and hygiene professionals at all mine sites, and medical facilities equipped to facilitate regular consultations, as well as emergencies. Hazards and risks related to health and hygiene are identified, assessed, and controls established when necessary.
Contribution to the SDGs
