Taboca Mining (Brazil)

How Taboca Mining achieved 2 million hours without accidents

Safety beyond traditional rules and procedures

Founded in 1969, Taboca Mining is one of the few companies in the global mining market to own its own mine. The Pitinga mine is located in the Amazon region, in the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo, Brazil.

The company operates across the full value chain, including exploration, mining, and commercialisation of tin, niobium, and tantalum.

In addition to its mining operations in Amazonas, Taboca Mining runs a metallurgical unit in Pirapora do Bom Jesus, São Paulo. This facility produces refined tin with a purity of 99.9%.

Taboca Mining is part of the Mining Division of the Peruvian Breca Group, a company with over 130 years of history, focused on driving progress, protecting the environment, and building the future.

Company at a glance

• 1,700 direct employees
• Largest producer of refined tin in Brazil

The challenge

According to Eduardo Orban, Operations Director at Taboca Mining, the company’s main challenge was to take workplace safety to a higher level.

The organisation invested in improving plant conditions, work areas, and employee training to reduce accidents.

While these efforts reduced incident severity, accidents continued to happen. People were still making mistakes, even after training.

Traditional safety methods were not delivering lasting change.

Moving beyond traditional safety methods

Leadership realised that most accidents were linked to human behaviour.

“We needed to understand how people behave and change the way we approached safety,” explains Orban.

This led Taboca Mining to implement SafeStart.

SafeStart helped teams build awareness, recognise everyday risks, and develop safer habits.

Building a strong safety culture

SafeStart was introduced at the Pirapora unit as part of a broader safety strategy. Shortly after implementation, noticeable changes appeared in employee behaviour and risk awareness.

These improvements produced strong results.

• In 2022, the Pirapora unit reached a major milestone of 2 million hours without accidents.
• Later that same year, in September, the site achieved 3 years without recordable injury accidents with no lost time.

Recognition and industry leadership

As a result of these achievements, the Pirapora unit became a reference for workplace safety within the Breca Group and across the Latin American mining industry.

Belisario Pérez, Corporate Safety and Health Manager at Minsur S.A., highlighted the unit as a benchmark in mining safety performance.

Following these results, Taboca Mining was recognised in 2022 as one of the TOP 5 safest companies in the Metals and Mining sector.

In February 2023, the Pirapora unit received SafeStart Gold Certification for its performance.

A lasting cultural change

“We became a reference because we are changing people’s culture,” says Eduardo Orban.
“People now prioritise safety. Their own safety and that of others. Before production.” He adds: “There is still a long way to go and much to achieve. But the cultural change around health and safety has taken us to a level we never imagined reaching.”

‍