A night shift cleaner got caught-up in the unguarded machinery of a
moving conveyor belt at a Cornish bakery and had to be released by
co-workers.
Wioletta Drozdz, 27, from Newquay, had both forearm bones broken in her right arm when the incident happened in the early hours of 10 December 2010.
Bodmin Magistrates fined Ms Drozdz's employer, Crantock Bakery Ltd, of Indian Queens, a total of £14,000 and ordered them to pay £15,000 in costs in a case brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on 29 June.
The court was told that Ms Drozdz was part of a team cleaning the production equipment at the company's bakery. Ms Drozdz had been instructed to clean the 'No.2' conveyor production line by the previous shift cleaning supervisor, who had left site a few hours before the incident.
The line was running when Ms Drozdz began working on the conveyor. She started cleaning dough from a moving steel pressure roller on the end of the conveyor using a metal scraper blade. The scraper slipped and her gloved right hand and arm were drawn into the nip or 'pinch point' between the steel roller and the rubber belt of the conveyor.
The HSE investigation revealed that the fixed guard that should have been in place on the equipment had been missing for a considerable period of time, at least a year before the incident happened. Ms Drozdz had also not received training on how to clean the conveyor safely, nor had she seen the machine's cleaning instructions.
Crantock Bakery Ltd. of Lodge Way, Indian Queens, pleaded guilty to a breach of Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and guilty to breaching Regulation 11 (1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.