Shell Moerdijk: Advancing Process Safety

GrandPersepctive’s Simon Bunegar explains how Shell Moerdijk is making award-winning process safety even better  When people think of Europe’s largest petrochemical facilities, they often imagine sprawling infrastructure, vast networks of pipelines, towering distillation columns, and the sheer scale of production that powers everything from plastics to packaging. This can only happen when safety sits firmly at the heart of operations. Thanks to major infrastructure upgrades and a world-class safety culture, which has become deeply ingrained in the DNA of every employee and contractor, Shell Moerdijk is learning from incidents to cement its reputation as one of the most sustainable and secure chemical production facilities on the continent. Built in the late 1960s, the plant is now home to some of the most advanced safety technology found anywhere in the world. Because of this it has grown into one of Europe’s biggest and most sophisticated chemical parks. Producing a diverse portfolio of essential industrial chemicals – including styrene, ethylene, ethylbenzene, propylene, benzene, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide – the plant employs around 850 people, while also...