Auckland worker's fingertips amputated after getting caught in machine

Friday, 2 August 2019

A worker had to have two fingertips amputated after getting them caught in a food packaging machine.

Australasian company, Alto Packaging Limited, was fined $250,000 over the incident in a decision released by the North Shore District Court on Thursday.

The company was also ordered to pay reparation of $32,500 over the incident, which occurred in October 2017.

WorkSafe later investigated the incident and said it found the machines was not 'adequately safeguarded' which allowed the worker to access counter-rotating rollers in the machine. 

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Alto Packaging Limited had trained some of its staff on how to use the machines but failed to make sure they were guarded, it said.

Between 2014 and 2017, WorkSafe issued the company – which has more than 20 sites across the country – with nine improvement notices and one prohibition notice.

Most of the notices were related to machine guarding problems, WorkSafe said. 

WorkSafe's chief inspector of specialist interventions, Hayden Mander, said Alto Packaging should have been aware of the risks involved with working around unguarded machinery.

'This company has not learned from its previous failings,' Mander said.

'If you've been subject to 10 notices for health and safety failings since 2014, you've got to know you're not doing something right.

'The right response to this alarming record should have been a company-wide review of its machine guarding – instead a worker has been left with life changing injuries,' he said. 

'It is dispiriting for the health and safety regulator to have to ask: 'how many times do you need to be told things are not right before you actually put them right?' 

'We answered that question by prosecuting Alto Packaging.'