A food manufacturing firm has seen its fines for safety failings exceed £1 million following a spate of accidents involving poor machine guarding.
The company’s latest prosecution resulted in a fine of more than half a million pounds after three of its employees suffered serious injuries in separate incidents involving machinery.
The company has a history of poor machinery guarding practices, having previously been convicted and fined almost a million pounds following an incident in 2021 (see below).
The latest case involved incidents which occurred just a year after its first prosecution. On 25 June 2022, a woman’s arm was caught in a conveyor belt at the company’s facility in Bolton. This incident resulted in two open fractures and irreversible nerve damage in her hand. The woman required three surgeries and the placement of two metal plates for reconstruction.
Then, the following month, another incident occurred at the company’s second site in Bolton, where a man was injured after getting trapped in a mechanical mixer. He was in the process of fixing the machine when the lid unexpectedly fell on his left arm. Neither the supervisor nor the on-call manager could be reached, leaving the employee stuck in the mixer for approximately 90 minutes before being rescued by the fire brigade. The man sustained an open fracture in his arm, along with multiple fractures and nerve damage in his left forearm.
On 4 December 2022, at the same site as the first incident, a woman suffered the severing of a finger after her hand became caught in an unprotected drive belt while operating a machine. She was also left with ongoing nerve damage to her hand.
Manchester Magistrates’ Court was told that the company had a history of poor machinery guarding practice, having previously been convicted and fined £858,000 following an incident in 2021, where a 26-year-old employee had to have his right arm surgically removed following an incident with a piece of machinery. (You can read the full details of that case here.)
The HSE investigation into the 2022 incidents found the company failed to keep employees safe from risks posed by food manufacturing machinery, and that training was inadequate and monitoring insufficient to rectify issues.
The company, which has been in business for just 17 years, pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations. The company was fined £573,344 and was ordered to pay £12,288 in prosecution costs at a hearing in December.
The company did not effectively ensure employee safety from the hazards associated with food manufacturing machinery. The training provided was inadequate, and there was insufficient oversight to address the problems. It is important for industries to understand the potential dangers arising from the use of, or working near, dangerous machinery. The risk of injury is higher when machinery becomes unreliable and develops faults, or it is used improperly through inexperience or lack of training.
SOURCE – IOSH
