Middle East Business
Alba reaches 50 million working hours without a lost time injury across its employees and contractors
By Staff Writer | 8 September 2026
The Bahrain smelter passed the mark on 7 September, a company record, and its chief executive credited the contractor workforce alongside employees. The figure counts hours worked since the last injury that kept someone off work, so it is a measure of the site's whole labour force, including the contractors who build and maintain it.
Aluminium Bahrain, known as Alba, achieved 50 million safe working hours without a lost time injury on 7 September 2026. The company calls the figure a new benchmark in its history, the highest it has recorded, and attributes it to the collective efforts of its management, employees and contractors to strengthen safety and operational performance across the company.
Alba describes itself as the world's largest aluminium smelter on one site. The hours counted towards the record are those of everyone working on it, and the company's announcement names its contractors alongside its management and employees as the people who produced the figure.
Reaching 50 million safe working hours without an LTI is a remarkable achievement and a proud moment in Alba's history. It reflects Alba's unwavering commitment to fostering a workplace where safety is embedded in every activity, decision and behaviour. I extend my sincere appreciation to our employees and contractor workforce for maintaining the highest safety standards every day. Together, we will continue to raise the bar and set new benchmarks in safety excellence.
Ali Al Baqali, Chief Executive Officer of Aluminium Bahrain
What the measure counts
A lost time injury is one that leaves the injured person unable to return to work on their next scheduled shift. Hours without one accumulate across the whole workforce, so on a large site the count grows by hundreds of thousands of hours a month and resets to zero on a single qualifying injury.
The company says the achievement builds on its long-standing investment in safety leadership, workforce engagement, capability building and safety management systems. Alba has published a sequence of such milestones in its own releases, at 5, 10, 20, 30 and 38 million hours, so the 50 million figure marks the continuation of a single unbroken run rather than a new count.
Why it matters to contractors
For the contracting firms that work on the site, a client record of this kind has a direct bearing on how work is let and supervised. Contractor hours are inside the count, so a contractor's injury would end the run, and the safety conditions written into Alba's contracts and permits to work are what protect it. The company's decision to name the contractor workforce alongside its employees in the announcement reflects that. Alba's leadership appointments made at the end of August were reported on this tab on 31 August.
What has not been stated
The company has not stated the date of the last lost time injury from which the count runs, the split of the 50 million hours between employees and contractors, the number of people working on the site, or the total recordable injury rate over the same period. Those points are left open here.