Melton Mowbray food giants fined nearly £600k after workers were badly burned
One of Melton Mowbray’s biggest employers has been fined more than half-a-million-pounds after two workers were badly burned at a food production plant.
Samworth Brothers Ltd, which owns the Ginsters, Soreen and West Cornwall Pasty Co brands and is the parent company of the town’s Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) following an incident at its Kettleby Foods factory, off the Leicester Road.
A hearing at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court was told that an employee and a contractor suffered scald injuries after being splashed with hot water while carrying out maintenance of steam pipework.
The men were working to replace a leaking gasket in an isolation valve in the boiler room of the factory.
They were above the boiler on a gantry, which did not provide access to the specific part of the pipework they were working on and so both men had to step off the gantry and work on top of the boiler.
When they removed the gasket, they were both splashed with hot water from the pipework, suffering scald injuries.
One of the men suffered 4-5 per cent subdermal burns, and the other sustained 9 per cent subdermal, second-degree burns.
The investigation by HSE found that Samworth Brothers Limited had failed to risk assess the task and to document a safe system of work for the work being undertaken.
The company said it was ‘very sorry’ the incident happened and that it took immediate actions to improve its health and safety protocols at all of its sites.
HSE inspector, Stacey Gamwell, commented: “A company this size should have known better.
“This was a wholly avoidable incident which could have resulted in even more serious consequences.
“If Samworth Brothers Ltd had properly risk-assessed the task, they would have identified the need for proper controls for working at height, as well as robust isolation and lock-off procedures, including supervision and monitoring to make sure those procedures and controls were properly enforced.
“Their failure led to severe and painful scalding injuries which should never have happened."
Samworth Brothers Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
The company was fined £594,000 and ordered to pay £5,834 in prosecution costs, in full, and a £2,000 victim surcharge.
The company was also ordered to pay £6,000 in compensation to the injured employees. All sums are to be paid by 4 January 2027.
Following the court hearing, a spokesperson for Samworth Brothers said: “The health and safety of our colleagues is our most important priority, and we are very sorry that this incident happened.
"It is important to learn from these events.
"Immediately after the accident we launched an extensive internal review to fully understand what had happened.
"As a result of this internal investigation several changes were made immediately to further improve upon our health and safety systems and processes in this area of work across our business.
"In addition, we co-operated very closely with the Health and Safety Executive on their own investigations.”