The awards were announced at the PMA’s 63rd Annual West Coast Safety Southern California Area Award event, held on March 1st in Los Angeles.

On February 29th the PMA held its State of Washington Area Safety Awards, naming APM Terminals Tacoma winner of the Washington area’s Category C Container Terminal Safety Award and the Coast Award for Category C for the safest terminal on the Pacific Coast. APM Terminals Tacoma also won the award for the “Greatest reduction in injury rates for the Washington Area”, irrespective of terminal size.

“We are very proud to have received these safety awards. The safety of staff and others who visit our facilities is APM Terminals’ highest priority. It is gratifying that the hard work of our men and women in ensuring the safe operation of our terminals is recognized by our peers in the industry.” said APM Terminals President of the Americas Region, Eric Sisco.

The PMA awards, based on reported injury rates per man-hours worked, are divided by geographic area and by size. Awards are presented for the Southern California ports, and for the Washington and Oregon ports. Facilities are separated into three categories according to size; Container Terminal Category A are those terminals totaling more than one million man hours worked per year, Category B is for terminals with more than 500 thousand, but less than 1 million man hours worked, and Category C are those terminal operators with less than 500,000 thousand man hours worked per year. Local area awards are presented in each of the terminal categories based on injury rates, and the Coast awards are given in each terminal category for the best safety performance on the entire West Coast.

APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles, the largest container terminal in the United States, handled 1.91 million TEUs in 2011. The Lost-Time Injury Frequency (LTIF) rate at Pier 400 decreased by 22% to 6.01 per million man-hours worked for the year from 2010. On an average day, there are approximately 2,000 longshore workers and others at Pier 400, including 5,300 trucks per day, and 17 doublestack trains per week.

APM Terminals Tacoma, which handled 264,397 TEUs in 2011, improved its LTIF rate by 64% to 8.39 per million man-hours worked for the year.

In January, APM Terminals was presented with The Gerald H. Halpin Safety Excellence Award for 2010-2011 by the Signal Mutual Indemnity Association for safety achievement in its US operations. APM Terminals Pacific, Ltd., which performs stevedoring services at APM Terminals Pier 400 and APM Terminals Tacoma, was also given the Signal Mutual Industry Leader Safety Award for the most improvement of safety performance in terms of declining reported incidents for the past three consecutive years.