'This company has not learned from its previous failings'

“It is dispiriting for the health and safety regulator to have to ask: How many times do you need to be told things are not right before you actually put them right? We answered that question by prosecuting Alto Packaging.”

Those are the words of WorkSafe Chief Inspector Specialist Interventions Hayden Mander, commenting after the food packaging company was prosecuted following previous warnings around the importance of machine guarding went unheeded.

In a decision released by the Albany District Court, Alto Packaging was fined $250,000, and ordered to pay reparation of $32,500 after an incident in October 2017 in which a worker’s fingers were caught in a machine used to make food packaging.

The tips of two of the worker’s right fingers were later amputated. A subsequent WorkSafe investigation found the machine was not adequately safeguarded, which allowed the worker to access counter-rotating rollers in the machine.

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The company had trained some of its staff on how to use machines, but failed to ensure machinery was adequately guarded.

Alto Packaging has more than 20 sites across the country and between 2014 and October 2017, WorkSafe issued the company with nine Improvement Notices and one Prohibition Notice. The majority of these notices related to machine guarding issues.

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Alto Packaging should have been aware of the risks involved with working around unguarded machinery, added Mander.

“This company has not learned from its previous failings. If you’ve been subject to 10 notices for health and safety failings since 2014, you’ve got to know you’re not doing something right,” he said.

“The right response to this alarming record should have been a company-wide review of its machine guarding – instead a worker has been left with life changing injuries.”