A company has been fined more than $200,000 after a worker had their hand trapped in a sausage casing machine for more than 20 minutes.
NZCC Limited processes and supplies sausage casing. Photo: 123RF
NZCC Limited was sentenced in the Hastings District Court yesterday following an incident in 2017 which left a worker with a broken wrist and their hand requiring skin grafts.
The Hawke's Bay company processes and supplies sausage casing.
During the incident in July 2017 the worker's left hand was trapped between two rollers for 20 minutes while they were operating the sausage casing machine.
Worksafe investigated the company and found it was not the first time the machine was involved in a similar incident.
It found the company had hired an engineer to fix the issues after the first incident but it was ineffective.
NZCC Limited then continued to knowingly use the machine in its unsafe state.
Worksafe said: "The company's failure to address a known safety issue has left the worker with significant, and completely unnecessary, injuries".
The company was fined $210,000 for the incident, and ordered to pay reparation of more than $18,000 as well as $10,000 to the victim.