NZCC Limited, a company that processes and supplies sausage casings, was sentenced at the Hastings District Court yesterday after a July 2017 incident in which a worker’s left hand was trapped between two rollers while they were operating a sausage casing machine.

WorkSafe’s investigation found that after a similar incident on a sausage casing machine two years earlier, NZCC Ltd engaged an engineer whose two proposed solutions proved to be ineffective. The company then reverted to using the machine in its unsafe state. The sausage casing machine involved in this incident was in the same unsafe state.

The worker’s hand was trapped for approximately 20 minutes. They suffered a broken wrist and de-gloving of the back of their hand, requiring skin grafts.

NZCC Ltd was fined $210,000 for the incident and ordered to pay reparation of more than $18,000 (in addition to $10,000 already paid to the victim).

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