A paving manufacturer in South Australia has been fined $75,000 for failing to guard a conveyor belt roller and pinch point after a worker suffered serious injuries when his arm became trapped in the machine.
Paving Group, trading as Quantumstone, was sentenced in the South Australian Employment Tribunal following the incident in Netley in February 2022.
The incident caused a serious degloving injury to the man’s dominant right forearm and hand, as well as multiple fractures, tendon torn off the bone and a significant loss of skin, causing him to spend 17 days in hospital and undergoing numerous surgeries.
A SafeWork SA investigation found the company breached its duties under the Work Health Safety Act 2012 and exposed workers to a safety risk while performing batching duties, being a process of paver production which included weighing material and oxides ready for mixing and batching.
Specifically, the company failed to provide guarding to prevent workers from becoming entangled in the conveyor’s lower roller drum at any time when the conveyor was operational.
Quatumstone was charged with a Category 2 offence against section 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012.
One to two months before the incident, the worker who was in charge of the batching work and later injured, became aware that the chute designed to be supported above the conveyor had a broken weld requiring it to be propped up with a rod or bar to prevent it dragging on the conveyor.
The factory manager was aware of the fault two weeks before the incident. The fault was not documented and the chute had not been scheduled for repair.
On the day of the incident in February 2022, the worker initially turned off the conveyor to make an adjustment to stop the chute dragging. After restarting the conveyor, he noticed the chute had moved slightly and went to make a smaller adjustment without stopping the conveyor.
He did not intend to touch the conveyor but slipped on gravel and fell, resulting in his right hand and forearm becoming caught in the pinch point of the roller and lower roller drum of the batch conveyor.
The worker was 34 years old at the time of the incident and had worked for the company and its previous owner since 2013. He was informally trained to use the batching plant about five years prior to the incident by the previous operator, but no written instructions were provided.
The company was acquired by Queensland-based Paving Group in 2017.
Prior to the incident, there was no physical barrier preventing workers accessing the lower roller drum of the batch conveyor. No risk assessment of the batch conveyor was completed following the change of company ownership.
Following a discount from an early guilty plea, Deputy President Magistrate Lieschke imposed a $75,000 fine. A conviction was recorded.
“Installing physical barriers such as guards is not only a well-known and conventional safety solution to reduce the risk of harm from the hazardous moving parts of powered machinery, it’s often very simple to do,” said SafeWork SA executive director, Glenn Farrell.
“We are still seeing far too many incidents resulting in serious injury or death as the result of guarding being non-existent, inadequate, removed or by-passed in some way. Disregarding worker safety will not go unpunished and I urge all businesses to review their current plant and machinery to ensure it is safe to use and operate, regardless of whether you have experienced an incident or not.”