With the holidays nearly upon us and 2017 drawing to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on and celebrate all that we have accomplished this past year—individually, as teams, and as a company.
We are finishing 2017 in a strong financial position, having recently achieved record adjusted EBITDA—a key financial performance indicator—of $6.1 billion over 12 months. The last time we saw anything even close to this was 2011. This accomplishment is a direct reflection of the hard work across our operations to focus on cost control and optimize production from our core assets.
This success comes on the heels of one of the longest and deepest downturns in our industry’s history—it’s incredible how our employees have adapted
to the changing conditions and have stayed focused on the steps we needed to take to emerge stronger.
Thank you to all our employees for making this possible.
And while strong operating results and record financial performance are very important to the health of our company, the fact that we accomplished this while also significantly improving our safety performance and continuing to make good progress on our sustainability goals are absolutely paramount.
To me, this is what it means to be Living Our Values, the theme of this issue of Connect.
Our values—safety, sustainability, integrity, respect, courage and excellence—are rooted in everything we do at Teck. They truly are the Teck way, and we’ve seen some great examples in 2017.
In “Courageous Safety Leadership: At the Heart of Safety at Teck”, we take a look at how far we’ve come in establishing our culture of safety, from 2009 to today. During this time, I have seen a tremendous shift in our attitudes about safety, driven by our deep personal commitments to safety leadership and having the courage to speak up.
In 2017, we continued rolling out the fourth phase of CSL, Exploring our Culture of Safety. At the heart of CSL4 is the concept of Safe Production, with teams working together to identify how safe production can be achieved so that everyone can—and does—go home safe and healthy every day.
In line with our focus on Safe Production, we are also looking at how advances in technology can improve our business. In “Remote Dozer Puts Operators in High-Tech Driver’s Seat”, we look at how Coal Mountain Operations is using a remote dozer to access coal that was previously too hazardous to reach. The video that accompanies this article shows this remarkable technology in action.
In “Committed to Excellence”, we profile the 30 employees who were recently announced as recipients of 2017 Excellence Awards, a program that recognizes the outstanding achievements, leadership and innovations of our employees. The remarkable stories I hear and the people I meet through this program make it abundantly clear that our core value of Excellence is as strong as ever at Teck.
As we look to 2018, we know it will once again be a busy year and there is a lot to look forward to.
As always, our employees’ remarkable commitment to safety, sustainability and productivity will continue to drive our business and position us for success in 2018 and beyond.
On behalf of myself, the Senior Management Team, and our Board of Directors, I want to express sincere appreciation to all employees for your dedication and commitment to living Our Values every day, and for your tremendous work over this past year.
I wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy holiday season.
Don Lindsay
President and CEO
