Technical services

Meeting customer needs

As an organisation that has always been committed to technical and scientific excellence, considerations of product safety, health and safety, intellectual property, legislation and the environment are an inherent part of company policy and direction. The technical service department provides a centralised pool of expertise in each area to further our aim of best practice throughout research, product development, manufacturing and distribution.

Health and Safety
Management of health and safety is an important part of the overall management of activities in McBride. The two major parts of the company have a similar structure and organisation with the Human Resource Directors of CE and UK having responsibility for health, safety and the environment, managing central teams that co-ordinate activities. Each site has a health and safety manager in full or shared role. These managers have, or are working towards, qualifications required by local legislation, and also receive training required by internal McBride standards.

All sites have a system in place for the provision of occupational health, either via a contract with a company doctor or via full or part-time in-house health nurses. The level of resource depends on local legal requirements and the relative risk base of each facility. Both parts of the business have their own H&S policy, which covers all health and safety activities. These policies are translated into internal standards for each site and are documented and incorporated into management systems.

Legislation
McBride is well placed to ensure our customers' needs and concerns are represented in legislation, both through an active presence with trade associations, such as the UKCPI Technical Committee and representation on CTPA, BAMA and a variety of Working Groups at AISE. Our technical services staff provide information on impending legislation as early as possible so our customers can best understand implications and plan to take timely action. By working with other organisations to present issues affecting the industry in general and McBride in particular to all levels of government, we ensure that new and amended legislation does not unwittingly adversely affect the business.

Product safety
The product safety group is a central source for expert toxicological and risk assessment knowledge, providing support for development functions to ensure that all products are safe for intended and foreseeable use, packaged and labelled correctly. We conduct rigorous safety assessments on all new materials and new products including dermatological studies for product claim support. McBride plc's policy on animal testing is available in the Corporate and Social Responcibility section of the web site

The Environment
It is the intention of McBride to introduce our Environment Management System EMS to all manufacturing sites. Over 90% of sites already have EMS and are making progress toward ISO 14001 certification although the rate of progress will vary according to site needs and resource. Four sites are currently certified to the ISO standard (Ieper household, Ieper Personal Care, Bradford and Strzelce Opolskie).

Our Environmental Policies affirm our commitment to the consideration of environmental issues and the minimisation of environmental impacts in our business decisions, manufacturing processes and product development programmes.

The McBride plc Sustainability Report for 2004 is available for download in the Corporate Social Responcibility section of the web site.