Uponor North America has again been honored with two Governor’s Safety Awards by the Minnesota Safety Council.

The company’s Apple Valley campus won its fifth Governor’s Safety Award, recognized at the Bronze level this year, and the Lakeville distribution center won its fourth award, achieving the highest level, Diamond.

The annual Governor’s Safety Awards, which date back to 1934, recognize Minnesota employers for excellence in protecting employees from injuries, illnesses, and other health incidents. Organizations with an incident rate below those of the state and national rates in their industry are awarded for their efforts.

“Safety is the number-one priority across the integrated supply chain organization,” said Jon Sillerud, vice president of integrated supply chain, in a press release. “We start every shift-change meeting with the safety topic, and in 2023, we made enhancements to our safety program and placed emphasis on improving our safety culture. We also launched a Mission Zero program to raise awareness of safety with all employees. In 2023 we reduced our lost-time incident frequency rate by 48 percent, which was a huge improvement.”

Sillerud went on to say that as a nine-time recipient of the award, Uponor attributes the recognition to not only raising employees’ awareness and improving its safety culture, but also to a system of extensive self-audits, inspections, and risk assessments, as well as a newly implemented computer-based training.