Hand injury leads to fine for fabrication company

Date:

20 December 2012

Release No:

EM/MIDS/207

A Coalville fabrication company has been fined after a worker had part of his finger severed in a packaging machine.

The employee, who does not wish to be named, was working at Kenray Forming Ltd on the Stephenson Industrial Estate in Coalville when the incident happened on 6 September 2011.

The worker, 41, of Leicester, was test running the bagging machine when he slipped. His automatic reaction was to put his hand out to steady himself and it went straight into the front of the unguarded machine. The man's left hand came into contact with one of the vacuum pull belts and his fingers were trapped between the belt and the rollers.

His ring finger was severed just below the first knuckle and the rest of his fingers had multiple fractures. He was in hospital for three days and has since gone back to work at the company.

Hinckley Magistrates' Court was told today (20 December) that an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the company had failed to guard dangerous parts of the machine.

Kenray Forming Limited, Telford Way, Stephenson Industrial Estate, Coalville, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. They were fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,932.

After the hearing HSE inspector Richenda Dixon said:

"The incident was entirely preventable. It would not have happened if the available guards, which are there to protect machine operators, had not been removed. Kenray Forming Ltd should have had a system in place to ensure the guarding mechanisms remained permanently in place."

Free guidance on health and safety in packaging machinery is available at: www.hse.gov.uk/food/package.htm.

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... 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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