Food packaging firm in court over Rochdale worker’s injuries

Date published: 07 January 2011


A food packaging firm has been fined £27,500 after one of its workers was badly injured when he was dragged into a machine at a Rochdale factory.

The 35 year old from Wardle was working on a laminator, used to produce absorbent pads for meat packaging, when he was pulled in by two giant rollers.

Elliott Absorbent Products Ltd was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following the incident at its Greenvale Business Park factory, on Todmorden Road in Littleborough, on 22 October 2009.

The worker, who has asked not to be named, suffered severe friction burns to his arms, chest and stomach, requiring skin grafts to both his arms. He had been working for the company for just over six months.

Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard that Elliotts had disabled an infra-red sensor, designed to stop the machine operating when someone approached the rollers. The company, which supplies major supermarket chains across Europe, had shut off the sensor because paper dust generated by the machine had been triggering it.

The HSE investigation found that the company failed to provide an alternative safety guard until after the incident, when it installed a pressure mat which stopped the machine working when someone stepped on it.

The court also heard that HSE served Elliotts with three Improvement Notices in May 2008, regarding inadequate guards on three other machines at its factory at Blueberry Business Park, on Kingsway in Rochdale. The company complied with the notices within a month of them being issued.

Elliott Absorbent Products Ltd, of Deansgate in Manchester, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. The company was ordered to pay costs of £4,389 in addition to the fine at Manchester Crown Court on 7 January.

Sarah Taylor, the investigating inspector at HSE, said: “Sadly a worker has suffered permanent scarring because Elliotts didn’t do enough to look after the safety of its workers.

“The three enforcement notices HSE served following a visit to the company’s Rochdale factory in 2008 should have acted as a wake-up call to check the guards on all its machines.

“But the infra-red sensor on the machine at the company’s Littleborough factory was disabled without considering why it was there in the first place – to prevent workers being injured.”

There were 25 deaths and more than 19,000 serious injuries in the manufacturing industry in Great Britain last year. Information on improving safety is available at www.hse.gov.uk/manufacturing

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