Steel manufacturer fined after two employees injured

Date:

21 March 2013

Release No:

HSE/M/77/13

A Dudley steel tube manufacturer has been fined after two employees, including an apprentice just three weeks into a new job, were injured in separate incidents within the same month.

In the first incident at Marcegaglia (UK) Limited in Netherton on 10 November 2011, a 23 year-old worker crushed his right hand when he reached through a gap in a fixed safety guard on a machine in order to pick up a steel coil and feed it back into machinery.

In doing so he seemingly tripped a sensor that caused machinery parts to close and trap his hand. He fractured two bones, but was able to return to work on light duties.

A fortnight later, on 25 November, a 20 year-old apprentice who had only been at the company for three weeks severed the end of his thumb after it was trapped in a part of a machine that slits steel coils to make tubes.

The employee did not return to work for the company after the incident.

Dudley Magistrates' Court was told today (21 March) that an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that both injuries happened as a result of poor guarding standards and poor overall management of health and safety.

Magistrates heard that the apprentice was not being supervised at the time of his incident and had not been given a training schedule or any sort of monitoring or assessment by the company.

Marcegaglia (UK) Limited, of New Road, Netherton, Dudley, was fined £11,000 and ordered to pay £7,878 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE inspector Jenny Skeldon said:

"Both of these incidents were easily avoidable had the company properly assessed the risks and ensured that dangerous parts of machinery were adequately guarded to prevent injury.

"The company should also have ensured that appropriate management systems, particularly in relation to supervision, training and monitoring arrangements, were in place."

For more information on preventing incidents as a result of inadequate guarding visit www.hse.gov.uk/fee-for-intervention/basic-safety-mistakes/guards.htm

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce 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. Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states : "It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees."

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