During this week’s CPA Production-Technical Committee, CPA awarded Arauco North America’s MDF plant in Moncure, South Carolina with the 2020 Safety Innovation Award. The Safety Innovation Award recognizes a mill that has instituted a new policy, process or technology that has made it a safer place to work.
The Moncure plant’s use of a light curtain at the packaging lines is a state-of-the art tool for improving worker safety. A light curtain provides safety by ceasing machine operations if an object crosses a specified zone. This particular use of the light curtain was implemented after a near miss when a team member was conducting a quality check on the product.
CPA congratulates the staff at Arauco North America’s Moncure facility for prioritizing worker safety and implementing this new technology. Representatives from Arauco are invited to present further details and results on the light curtain at CPA’s Fall Meeting in October.
CPA received many deserving applications for the Innovation Award this year. Applications were anonymized and distributed to the CPA Board of Directors for voting. With the permission of applicant mills, CPA will post summaries of all of the safety innovation award submittals with the hope that these best practices can be adopted industry wide.
