After a WorkSafe investigation, French Bakery Ltd admitted to work health and safety failures before it was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court on Tuesday.
WorkSafe said the 41-year-old man's hand was pulled into the machine rollers at the bakery in April 2023, 1News reported.
The man's index finger was amputated, his thumb was partially amputated, and his middle finger was crushed.
French Bakery Ltd was fined $200,000 and ordered to pay $45,500 in reparations.
1News reported the worker said the incident "did not merely affect my hand".
"It shattered my livelihood, destabilised my family’s future, and left me with a permanent physical and emotional wound."
WorkSafe principal inspector Shaun Millar said one worker turned a machine on while another had his hand inside it.
"That’s the nightmare scenario that proper lockout procedures are designed to prevent," he said.
"Lockout/tagout isn’t optional. It’s a fundamental safety control."
WorkSafe said workers at the bakery were cleaning and maintaining the machinery without any method to ensure it couldn’t be turned on while they were exposed to moving parts.
Some had also never been trained or given proper equipment, it added.
Risk assessments at the company reportedly identified some hazards, but "completely missed" the crushing risk from the rotating parts inside the machine involved.
Millar said a tick-box risk assessment is "useless" and "creates a false sense of security", 1News reported.
"You need to systematically identify every way a worker could be harmed, including during cleaning, maintenance and repairs, not just during normal operation," Millar said.
"This wasn’t a freak accident. This was entirely preventable.
"Every business with machinery needs to ask themselves: Could this happen here? If you can’t confidently answer no, you have work to do.
"The solutions aren't complicated or expensive. The cost of not doing it is measured in workers' lives and livelihoods."
-Allied Media
