Linde North America’s Georgia plant receives Responsible Care® Certification

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Linde North America has received certification of its Cartersville, Georgia, manufacturing facility under the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care® program.

Linde North America is a member of The Linde Group, a world-leading gases and engineering company. The ACC is an association of producers, manufacturers and suppliers of chemical products.

Earlier this year, Linde’s corporate headquarters in Murray Hill, NJ, received certification under the Responsible Care® program. The Cartersville plant is the fourth of eight production locations on track to be certified before the end of the year.

The plant, which began operating earlier this year, is one of Linde’s newest air separation plants in the U.S. The plant cryogenically separates air to produce over 700 tons a day of liquid oxygen and nitrogen. From Cartersville, the gases are trucked to hospitals, food processors, metals and chemicals manufacturers in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. The plant employs 38 people.

Responsible Care is a globally recognized management system aimed at helping companies improve performance in areas such as safety, health, environment and security. Certification is mandatory for all ACC member companies, which must undergo headquarter and facility audits by an independent, accredited auditor to verify that they have a structure and system in place that manages and measures performance. Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) is Linde’s independent auditor.

“Responsible Care certification is confirmation that the Cartersville team is dedicated and capable of operating our facility to the highest standards,” said Jerome Brenneman, Cartersville plant manager. “The certification is a demonstration to our community, customers and stakeholders that Linde is a proud and responsibly managed member of the community.”

The Responsible Care management system offers an integrated, structured approach for driving continual improvement in seven key areas: community awareness and emergency response; security; distribution; employee health and safety; pollution prevention; process safety; and product stewardship.

Implementing the Responsible Care system is a multi-step process. Companies must first plan – identify, assess and evaluate potential hazards and risks associated with their products, processes and operations – and establish goals and objectives to address any significant hazards or risks. Next, they must do what they have planned, checking their progress along the way to measure performance and take necessary corrective actions. Communicating with employees and other stakeholders, including neighbors and customers, along the way also is essential.

“All the people at our Cartersville plant worked very hard for this certification, which falls right in line with our goals as a high performance organization and our vision to be the leading gases and engineering company,” said Charlie Koehler, vice president of safety, health, environment and quality for Linde North America. “Certification of the Cartersville plant demonstrates the employees’ total involvement in Linde’s commitment to sustaining the practices specified in the Responsible Care management system.”

The Linde Group is a world leading gases and engineering company with more than 50,000 employees working in around 100 countries worldwide. In the 2007 financial year it achieved sales of EUR 12.3 billion (USD 18.7 billion). The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards earnings-based and sustainable growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services.

Linde acts responsibly towards its shareholders, business partners, employees, society and the environment – in every one of its business areas, regions and locations across the globe. Linde is committed to technologies and products that unite the goals of customer value and sustainable development. For more information, see The Linde Group web site at www.linde.com