Welcome to the National Silicates' Web site. At National Silicates, we have four areas that represent our corporate culture.

Environment, Health & Safety Our safety programme is the STOP programme developed by DuPont.

Please take the time to STOP and carefully read this message. Decide to make safety an everyday commitment. Stop and look around you: look carefully at what people are doing. Observe in a careful, systematic way focusing on safe and unsafe behaviours. Act on both types of behaviours by talking to those people you are observing, reinforcing safe work practices and addressing at-risk behaviours. Report the action on your STOP card so that we can use the data to prevent and reduce incidents. If you have read this far, you have completed the STOP Cycle.

Our goal at National Silicates is to reduce and minimize risks so that at the end of the day everyone can go home safely. If each and every one of us apply the principles of STOP and apply the STOP cycle, we can accomplish our goal of zero injuries. Looking out for each other is the key to creating a safe and healthy work environment.

If we are to achieve our goals, we must continue to make safety an everyday mindset. We must alert our co-workers when they are doing an unsafe act and we must congratulate each other when we work safely. We must continue to heighten our awareness, through safety meetings, safety weeks, near miss reporting, STOP and daily conversations. Through team effort, we have improved our safety record over the last several years.

National Silicates is a good neighbour in the community in which we operate. As a member of the CCPA and in support of the Responsible Care initiative, National Silicates plants opened their doors to the public in the summer of 1999. Customers, suppliers, contractors, and the public were invited to meet National Silicates' employees and tour the plants. We wanted to ensure that those who work or live near our plants know what we produce, how we produce it, and the safeguards we take to ensure everyone's safety.

Today, National Silicates' broader concern for people and a willing acceptance of social responsibility are evident in many ways. The company is deeply committed to fair and equitable treatment for employees. It is also committed to maintain its environmental, health and safety performance, with a goal of zero injuries.

At National Silicates, we have become leaders in everything that we do, confident that we can lead the way in accident prevention and in the creation of a safe and healthy work environment.

• Employee Empowerment
  Our vision is a five-pronged approach, which was written by our employees. Their vision encompasses:
  
  
  1. The Customer and Service Quality Excellence.
  2. Provision of "world class" technical service to our customers
  3. Environmental propulsion using silicates and silicate derivatives
  4. Provision of a safe and healthy working environment which encourages strong team spirit, flexibility and initiative taking.
  5. Generating value to our stockholders.
  
  
  
  
• Doing things right the first time around through team work
  Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is the way that National Silicates looks at all problems and opportunities. Knowing that 'the customer is king,' this ingrained ethic of CQI is crucial in satisfying customers-with the right product at the right price, at the right time and in the right place. Team work and working together is the norm; SPC/SQC is used throughout our organization to allow us to make data based decisions for improvement our products and systems.
  
  
• Fair and ethical employee benefits and customer service
  People are the cornerstone that holds National Silicates together. We work hard at maintaining trust and high ethical standards with each other and with our customers. "To dwell under a proper concern for the best things," as advised by our founder, Joseph Elkinton in 1851 - we see our respect and support for each other as following this adage which has stood the test of time. Our benefit and compensation packages are competitive in the Chemical Industry.

On April 3, 2006, The Etobicoke Chamber of Commerce awarded National Silicates the 2006 Community Service, Business Corporate Award for their outstanding contribution in their community.  National Silicates has built strong community relationships over the past 75 years, and are "committed to do the right thing and be seen to do the right thing" by providing financial and volunteer support. Contributions have been made in the areas of Education, Wellness, Community Agencies, Health, Arts & Culture as well as through the Corporate Matching Gift Plan.  We are proud and thank our employees for their support and participation to raise funds through this plan for the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Lori's Room, St. Joseph's Hospital and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

We are a team of enthusiastic and committed employees. Our organization inspires loyalty; encourages creative thinking; supports our employees through all phases of their career through training and development programmes; promotes an atmosphere of risk-taking thus allowing National Silicates and the PQ Corporation to be the number one supplier of silicates in the world.