Heavy rice sacks cost food firm £53,000

Prosecutions and Claims |
04.02.2008

A food firm which allowed employees to balance on pallets on fork-lift trucks and unload 50kg sacks of rice by hand has been ordered to pay £53,000.

In June 2006 the HSE was investigating an incident at East End Foods where an employee had been injured by a 50kg sack of rice falling onto his neck.

During the investigation, inspectors discovered that employees routinely unloaded 50kg sacks of basmati rice manually from containers, with no mechanical aids. To access the sacks, employees were raised and lowered on pallets on the forks of lift-trucks.

East End Foods had already been served with an Improvement Notice in December 2002 for failing to risk assess the manual unloading of 45kg sacks of rice. After the notice was issued, the firm agreed to palletise 45kg sacks so they could be unloaded mechanically and it trained staff in manual handling for smaller weights.

But the HSE's investigation in 2006 found there was an ongoing risk of musculoskeletal injury, despite the firm receiving advice from its own health and safety consultant in 2005.

Investigating HSE inspector Judith Lloyd told HSP there was no risk assessment of any kind for the 50kg sacks: "The whole system was sadly lacking," she said. "[The containers] were just unloaded as and how the lads felt like emptying them."

In a typical six-month period between January and June 2006, employees manually unloaded 71 containers, each containing 480 bags - equivalent to 1,700 tonnes of rice.

An HSE ergonomist advised that a telescopic boom conveyor would have been suitable for this kind of work, as it could have been extended into containers and angled as needed.

East End Foods pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of employees, contrary to Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

On 22 January at Wolverhampton Crown Court, the firm was fined £25,000 with costs of £28,000.