Timber company fined after two workers sustain serious injuries

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Timber company fined after two workers sustain serious injuries

Two similar health and safety failings within three months have cost Rotorua timber company Claymark Limited over $680,000 in fines, reparations and costs.

WorkSafe says that one serious injury on a company’s watch is bad enough, but that a second in close succession shows an unacceptable approach to worker safety.

Claymark was sentenced in the Rotorua District Court yesterday after two of its workers sustained serious injuries while operating machinery on two separate occasions.

In the most recent incident at the company’s Vaughan Road site in Rotorua, a worker had his hand caught in machinery used to de-stack timber when trying to reinstate a dislodged chain. The worker lost the tips of his middle, index and little fingers as a result of the incident.

WorkSafe’s investigation found there was inadequate guarding on the machinery and no documented safe procedures for workers to follow when a chain became dislodged. The injured worker had also not been trained on the location of the emergency stop buttons on the machine (one of which was not fully operative or clearly marked). For this incident, Claymark was fined $264,000 and ordered to pay reparations of $4,000 in addition to $24,000 already paid.

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