A company in Hertfordshire has been fined after one of its workers suffered numerous injuries when he was hit by a reel of paper weighing 3.2 tonnes.
The worker, who has not been named, was part of a team loading the reel onto a container at the Essex site of Aspenlink in September 2013.
Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court heard how the 45-year-old man, who was in the container at the time, was struck by the reel when it was released by a forklift truck. He then became trapped between the bulkhead of the container and the reel.
He sustained several injuries as a result of the incident including a double fracture to his pelvis and a number of internal injuries. He was in hospital for nearly a month and had to have a series of operations, only recently returning to work.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the incident and found that, for three consecutive years the company had failed to act on advice given to them by their own safety consultants. They were advised that they needed to implement a safe system for loading paper reels at the site and told to conduct a thorough risk assessment, but had effectively ignored these recommendations since 2010.
As a result, on 15th January the company was fined £13,500 and told to pay costs of £1,200i after it pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Keith Waller said: “This was an entirely avoidable incident. The dangers associated with paper reels, in particular the risks associated with their loading and unloading, are well-known in the industry and entirely foreseeable.
“Aspenlink was first made aware of the numerous shortcomings in its management of health and safety by its own health and safety consultant in 2010 – some three years before the incident – but it failed to act on this advice.
“The company should have carried out proper assessment of the risks facing workers. Instead, it waited for an employee to be seriously injured before taking any action.”