A plastic packaging manufacturer has been fined for the second time in less than a year after an employee’s hand was crushed by the rollers of a laminating machine.
Reflex Flexible Packaging Ltd was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay £4,464 in costs after pleading guilty to health and safety offences at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court.
The company was also fined £277,500 in November last year following a fatal incident at another of its sites.
Paul Whalley, 46, sustained fatal injuries after he became trapped in an unguarded machine at the company’s site in Langley Mill, Derbyshire.
The latest case relates to a separate incident on 17 January 2025, at the company’s Telford premises, when an employee suffered serious injuries while cleaning a laminating machine.
The employee, a laminator operative and shift supervisor employed by the company, was injured while cleaning a laminator machine at the company’s premises on Halesfield, Telford.
The employee was cleaning the machine’s rollers using rags after a production run had finished. As they cleaned the machine, a rag became caught between two in-running rollers and pulled their left hand into the machine up to their wrist.
A colleague immediately activated the emergency stop, allowing them to free their hand from the machine.
They were taken to hospital with a severe crush injury and underwent two operations on their left hand. After spending four nights in hospital, they later required physiotherapy to rebuild strength in their injured hand.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that Reflex Flexible Packaging had failed to ensure effective measures were in place to prevent access to the dangerous moving parts of the laminating machine.
The HSE investigation also revealed that the company’s risk assessment and safe system of work were ‘not suitable and sufficient’.
HSE guidance states that employers must take effective measures to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery.
Reflex Flexible Packaging Limited pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 11(1) of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.
HSE Inspector Zach Morris said the incident was ‘entirely preventable’.
“Reflex Flexible Packaging Ltd failed to ensure that effective measures were in place to prevent access to dangerous parts of the laminating machine during cleaning operations,” Morris said.
“This is the second time in less than a year that this company has been sentenced for health and safety offences, following a fatal incident at another of its sites.”
“HSE will not hesitate to take enforcement action against duty holders who fail to protect workers from these well-known and foreseeable risks.”
