Nottinghamshire firm fined after worker loses finger

A company in Nottingham has been fined after an employee lost a finger in accident with an unguarded machine.

It is understood that the worker was not wearing suitable personal protective equipment (PPE), which may have helped to mitigate the damage.

Fiskars UK, which manufactures garden and household tools, was prosecuted following the incident involving a 29-year-old shift manager in December 2011. The employee was working around a block printing machine, then being used to emboss foil using a weight pressing down on a ram.

While adjusting the weight on the ram, to assist colleagues working to fix a fault, his left-hand index finger became caught in the machinery and was crushed. The damage caused was so severe that the finger had to be amputated below the second knuckle.

The resulting Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation discovered that a Perspex guard that was meant to be used on the machine was missing. Additionally, there was no safe process in place to access and isolate the operation of the machine.

Pleading guilty, the firm received a fine of £3,000 and was ordered to pay court costs of £2,288.10.

Speaking after the hearing, the HSE inspector on the case, Judith McNulty-Green, said:

“This incident was entirely preventable yet several failures led to a man suffering a painful injury.”

McNulty-Green went on to say that Fiskars should have introduced a safe system for work and training, as well as ensuring that no-one could access the machine's dangerous moving parts.