Our Purpose

To be a low-cost nickel producer that creates sustainable prosperity for employees, investors and communities.

Our Promises

The principles that we incorporate into our everyday decision-making at both the corporate and operational levels include: integrity, agility, safety and sustainability, continuous learning and innovation, and shared prosperity.

Over the last five years, Sherritt has been the recipient of a number of prestigious sustainability and health and safety awards, including:

• Green Cross International’s Green Star Award for Emergency Prevention and Preparedness in the Community,
• CIM-Syncrude Award for Excellence in Sustainable Development,
• Nedbank Capital Sustainable Business Award for Achievements in Biodiversity Management in Africa,
• UNAIDS Good Practice Award for Contributions to the Fight against HIV/AIDS, and
• Corporate Knights, Future 40 Responsible Corporate Leaders in Canada.

This external recognition of Sherritt’s efforts validates our ongoing commitment to improvement and leading practice in our operations.

Demonstrating our promise to continuous learning and innovation, Sherritt’s technological discoveries help to improve operating efficiencies and, by doing so, reduce environmental impacts of mineral processing. These efforts help drive down production costs and environmental impacts, and increase by-product recoveries for base and precious metals, including nickel, cobalt and zinc.

Strong partnerships – with employees, business partners, governments and communities – have always been at the heart of our company

To find out more click here: Sherritt 2016 Sustainability Report

Minimizing Our Environmental Footprint

GENERAL:

• Our efficient metals process generates a fertilizer by-product, creating a value-add business that helps feed our growing population.
• The site communicates frequently and transparently with regulatory agencies and complies with environmental requirements.
• The energy efficiency of Sherritt’s overall nickel business is considered to be top-quartile in the world, measured against other lateritic nickel producers.
• The Sherritt Fort Site has dramatically intensified its production over its 60-year history, while reducing environmental impacts. Production is now three times the average of the 1950s through the 1970s, with no additional production of steam or ammonia, the largest energy consumers.

AIR:

• Sherritt is a member of the Northeast Capital Industrial Association (NCIA), which supports the Fort Air Partnership (FAP). FAP operates and manages nine ambient air monitoring stations and 57 passive air monitoring sites in the Industrial Heartland area. FAP data is publicly available on their website: www.fortair.org.
• The Fort Site operates in a manner to minimize atmospheric discharges. The site has 13 air emission sources that are regulated under our Operating Approval. These sources are regulated for one or more of the following: Free Ammonia, Particulate Matter, SO2, SO3 and Sulphuric Acid, and Soluble Fluorides.
• Point Source (stack) monitoring consists of annual emissions testing on all our regulated sources and continuous monitoring on four of the regulated sources.
• The Fort Site has undertaken a variety of improvement initiatives that reduce air emissions, resulting in significant reductions in emissions of ammonia, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and greenhouse gases.

WASTE:

• Where possible, the Fort Site reuses what would be otherwise categorized as waste. For example: during tank cleanouts, whenever possible, water and solids are recycled back through the process.
• All of the other metals present in the imported feeds are sold as by-products:
  • Zinc sulphide is sold to zinc refineries.
  • Copper sulphide is sold to copper refineries.
  • Iron and residual nickel and cobalt are sold to nickel facilities for further recovery of the nickel and cobalt.

SURFACE AND GROUNDWATER:

• Surface runoff (storm water) is collected and treated onsite before being discharged to the Alberta Capital Region Wastewater Facility, where it is treated for further recovery before being discharged back to the river.
• We have groundwater collection systems in place to reduce our environmental impact.

Emergency Response

• Sherritt is one of the founding members of NRCAER, a mutual aid emergency response association whose members include chemical producers, emergency management professionals, pipeline companies, chemical transporters and area municipalities to train, plan and share best practices for emergency response.
• Sherritt is committed to ongoing training as a proactive measure towards health and safety. At our Fort Saskatchewan refinery, we undergo annual training as well as a full scale exercise every five years, which includes local emergency response, our neighbours, the municipality, NGO partners and our site.
• Sherritt uses the Incident Command System (ICS) to ensure consistent approaches with its municipal and industry partners. ICS is the recommended emergency management system for all responders and organizations in Alberta. Developed in California in the 1970s after a series of devastating wildfires, the Incident Command System proved to be extremely effective in dealing not only with wildfires, but with any type of disaster. As a result, Incident Command has become an all-hazard, all-response system.

Community Engagement

• Our decision to locate our nickel refinery in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta in 1954 was due to the proximity of water, natural gas and the national rail line. It was also a decision to invest in the community, as we created hundreds of skilled jobs and a robust local supply chain capable of connecting the town with a national and international marketplace. The refinery was the first facility built in what is now known as the Industrial Heartland, the diversified, value-add manufacturing centre of Alberta.
• Since establishing the nickel refinery here, Sherritt has been an agent for diversification. Further developments by Sherritt included the construction of additional fertilizer facilities, specialty materials production, specialty chemicals production and a coinage mill. Some of these are now operated by other companies on the original Sherritt site.
• In its early days, Sherritt was a significant supporter of Fort Saskatchewan’s infrastructure, including recreation and cultural facilities.
• More recently, Sherritt’s contributions to the community included Fort Saskatchewan’s recreation facilities (the Sherritt Cultural Pavilion and Sherritt CEP Arena in the Dow Centennial Centre), the Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital, the Reading Zone at the Fort Saskatchewan Public Library, and contributions to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s hoisting and rigging program and Centre for Millwright Technology.
• Sherritt’s employees have supported numerous community endeavours for many years, including annual programs for the United Way and the Fort Saskatchewan Food Bank.

Socio-economic Benefits of Nickel and Cobalt

Sherritt has been an agent of economic diversification in the Heartland region for over 60 years.

• Sherritt’s Fort Site produces nickel, cobalt and fertilizer, providing value by employing approximately 750 people locally and by using Alberta-based services and suppliers ($86 million in 2016), thus contributing to a stable and diverse economy in this province.
• Use of nickel and cobalt is critical to advancing provincial, national and global goals of a more sustainable economy.
• Nickel compounds play an important role in underpinning the competitiveness of major industrial and service sectors and support economic efficiency and innovations across large parts of the economy, while achieving environmental goals (Nickel Institute, 2017).
• The Cobalt Development Institute states that, “cobalt is the heart of the drive for alternative and renewable energy systems, whether as a hard wearing alloy in wind and wave generators, as a subtle catalyst used for ‘splitting’ water in the newly developing solar energy technologies or helping power electric vehicles of the future” (CDI 2017).