A QUARRY company has been fined £75,000 after a man died at its plant in Cornwall.

Robert Bickley, 42, died from head injuries after he became entangled in the fixed guard on a crushing machine. The mesh guard hit the flywheel which was rotating at 305 times a minute.

Mr Bickley, a fitter, was working at Carnsew Quarry, Penryn, owned by Aram Resources Ltd when the incident happened.

He died at the scene. No-one witnessed the incident on July 8, 2004. It was thought that he might have been trying to empty a redundant diesel tank next to the flywheel.

At an earlier court hearing Aram Resources pleaded guilty to two counts. The first was that it failed to give appropriate training in guarding machinery. The second related to the company's failure to ensure a proper mesh guard.

Yesterday at Truro Crown Court the company was fined £40,000 for the first count and £35,000 for the second, with £30,000 costs.

Anna Vigars, prosecuting, said: "Experiments carried out after the accident found that it only took 10kg of pressure to displace the mesh."

She said that there should have been a gap of 850mm between the mesh and the flywheel and that in this case the gap was found to be only 34mm.

Keith Morton, defending, said that work like emptying the diesel tank should have been planned. He said that it had not been planned and that if it had then the crushing machine would have been switched off.

Mr Morton said: "Robert Bickley was a very safety-conscious man but he placed himself in a dangerous position. He acted completely out of character."

At this point Judge Paul Darlow said: "He was entitled to assume that the guard would do its job. We don't know for certain why he was there – he could have slipped or stumbled into the mesh – we will never know."

Mr Morton said the company had and has a "culture of safety".

He said: "Between 2001 and June 2008 half a million man hours have been worked at the site, and aside from Mr Bickley not a single injury has occurred to either an employee or contractor."

Mr Morton said: "The company accepts that the inadequacy of the guard was a factor that contributed to Mr Bickley's death."

Aram Resources Ltd has assets of about £19 million with 20 employees.

Before passing sentence Judge Darlow said: "This case involves the untimely and entirely unnecessary death of Robert Bickley. There is no sentence I can pass that will alleviate the grief or sadness of the family's premature loss.

"The guard fell a long way below the required standards of safety."

He acknowledged the company's safety record and that it had no previous convictions or warnings. He added: "I have taken into consideration that since this accident extensive steps have been taken to avoid any repetition of this tragic incident."

The case was brought by the Health and Safety Executive. After the hearing Simon Edwards, an HSE inspector, said: "All employers have a duty of care towards their employees and quarries are particularly dangerous places. Although much has been done to improve health and safety standards in the quarry industry, there is no room for complacency.

"A quarry worker is more than twice as likely to be killed through a accident at work as a construction worker and 13 times as likely as someone working in manufacturing industries."