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CEO
OVERVIEW
I am delighted to present this report
of our achievements for 2017.
It has been a busy and challenging year,
but despite demands on areas across the
business due to Inland Rail and finalising
an extension to the Hunter Valley Access
Undertaking, we continue to deliver on
our strategic priorities.
Our two operating business units, Hunter
Valley and Interstate, produced sound
results in the face of ongoing tough
conditions and continued to provide great
service to our customers.
And the decision by our Shareholder in
May 2017 to invest a further $8.4 billion
into ARTC to deliver Inland Rail is a
significant responsibility bestowed on
the company and we look forward
to working with our Shareholder to
successfully deliver this project.
—DRIVING CHANGE WITH
POSITIVE SAFETY
PERFORMANCE
What I am particularly proud of is
our safety performance over the past
12 months.
Our safety culture improvement strategy
has been critical to achieving this and our
people have demonstrated that our value
of ‘No Harm’ is central to everything we
do – integrating it into their everyday
behaviours this year more than any
previous.
As a consequence we achieved the lowest
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR)
in company history, of 1.07. And our
Interstate Business Unit went the
entire year without an LTI reported.
Our continued cultural change toward
safety, through empowered leadership
and local decision-making has been
essential to this success.
While our strategy has helped us reduce
the key ‘lagging’ indicator of Lost Time
Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), we must
stay vigilant. There is still much to be done
to reach our goal of No Harm. Leveraging
off the investment we have made in our
leadership and employee engagement
work will be critical in our ‘Pathway
to Zero’ journey.
—STRONG FINANCIAL
RESULTS
Our underlying financial performance
over the past year has again been
strong, despite external challenges.
As a regulated infrastructure operator,
our access pricing is overseen by the
Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC) under voluntary
access undertakings.
At the end of June 2017, after extensive
negotiations and industry engagement,
the ACCC approved the resetting of the
Hunter Valley Access Undertaking (HVAU)
commercial parameters relating to rate
of return and remaining mine life.
Importantly, this gives industry and
ARTC regulatory and pricing certainty
for the four and a half year term of the
agreement, albeit at lower return rates for
ARTC compared to prior years. While this
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