A firm has been fined after a man's finger was sheared off by machinery.
Napier Brown & Company Ltd of Normanton Industrial Estate was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £2,446 costs at Wakefield Magistrates Court.
On March 5 a packaging line at the works became blocked and an electrical engineer put his arm in an inspection opening to try to clear it.
His index finger was sheared off below the first knuckle by a rotating valve, which should not have been accessible, the court heard.
The company admitted breaching work safety laws.
The Health and Safety Executive issued an Improvement Notice on March 20 and the court heard that the firm has since carried out work to make sure the incident is never repeated.
Following the case, the HSE called on all employers to ensure that machinery had proper safety guards
HSE Inspector Geoff Fletcher said: "Dangerous parts of machinery should not be accessible, and this must include times when maintenance is being carried out.
"In this instance the company failed to ensure that a risk assessment was carried out for the maintenance activity and that the appropriate procedures were in place and so relied upon inadequate and informal systems. The injured person will now have to live with the consequences of these failures for the rest of his life."
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