Sweet manufacturer sentenced over severed finger

Date:

10 August 2011

Release No:

HSE/NW/44Tangerine

A leading sweet manufacturer has been sentenced after part of a worker's finger was cut off at a Blackpool factory.

The employee at Tangerine Confectionery Ltd was trying to remove a blockage in one of the sweet-making machines when his left hand was pulled in, severing his index finger to the top knuckle.

The company, which produces liquorice allsorts and sherbet fountains among other sweets, was prosecuted following a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation into the incident. It found the worker had been able to reach the rotating parts in the machine while the power was still on.

Blackpool Magistrates' Court heard the 25-year-old from Blackpool was operating the machine on the morning of 8 September 2008 when it became blocked. He removed the guard to clear the blockage when the rotating wheels that flatten the sweet mixture caught his hand.

Doctors were unable to reattach the end of his finger due to the crushed nerves, and he needed five months off work to recover.

Tangerine Confectionery, which has seven factories around the country, pleaded guilty to a breach of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 after it failed to make sure the machine stopped operating when the guard was not in place.

The company, of Vicarage Lane in Blackpool, was fined £3,400 and ordered to pay £4,568 in prosecution costs on 10 August 2011 following the incident at its Clifton Road site in Marton.

Speaking after the hearing, the investigating inspector at HSE, Anthony Banks, said:

"This incident has resulted in a worker suffering a permanent injury but it should simply never have been allowed to happen.

"The risk of injury from these types of machines are well known in the industry and Tangerine Confectionery has since installed a new guard over the machine which cuts the power as soon as it is lifted.

"If this guard has been in place at the time of the incident then one of the company's employees would not have lost part of his index finger."

A total of 25 workers were killed and more than 4,000 suffered major injuries in the manufacturing industry in Great Britain last year. Information on preventing injuries is available at www.hse.gov.uk/manufacturing.

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken...which are effective to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone."

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