THE widow of a man crushed to death in an horrific works accident welcomed the £100,000 fine imposed on his employers.

Smurfit UK admitted failing to ensure the safety of workers and particularly Ian Holgate who was dragged into unguarded rollers on a massive cardboard-making machine at premises in Calder Vale Road, Burnley.

Father of two Mr Holgate was 29 when he died cleaning pulp from the rollers on January 26 last year. He lived with his family in St Giles Terrace, Padiham.

His widow Elizabeth, who now lives in Fence, and his mum Freda Spencer, of Burnley, were at Burnley Crown Court to hear the sentence.

Afterwards Elizabeth, mother of Chloe, 10, and Conor, eight, said: "I didn't expect the fine to be that high but I am glad it was.

"Working in dangerous situations there was just regarded as normal. Ian talked about his work all the time and just took it as part of the job."

She said Ian's death shouldn't have happened and that the company had received enough warning about the dangers.

Mrs Spencer added: "Nothing can bring Ian back but we just hope that nothing similar happens to anyone else."

The company was also ordered to pay £5,225 costs. The court heard that the company had been fined £15,000 after an accident at its Blackburn plant in 1995 when Mark Earnshaw, of Wilson Street, Blackburn, was killed when he fell into a baling machine at Smurfit Recycling on the Whitebirk industrial estate.

Announcing the fine, Judge David Pirie said the fact of the matter was that the company had given no effective attention to the dangers of that particular part of the machine and that failure was a serious matter indeed.

He had heard that it was custom and practice by workers on some of the shifts to crawl into a small void to clean a vacuum box and rollers by hand while the machine was still operating at working speed.

"The danger involved is in my judgement glaring," he said.

No adequate assessment of the risk involved had been done by management before the accident. The company accepted no real assessment was made about how the task of cleaning the rollers should be done and that was what was at the heart of the matter.

No instructions were ever given to Mr Holgate on how to clean the rollers or how to do it safely.

Judge Pirie added: "It is in my judgement a very serious breach of duty indeed. The danger to employees was obvious."

Andrew Long, for the Health and Safety Executive, said the gap into which Mr Holgate crawled was 18ins wide and 20ins high. He was on his side when he tried to clear the clogged roller with his hand with the machine running at a speed of 90 metres a minute.

His hand was caught and he was dragged into the machine suffering multiple injuries. He was killed instantly.

Mr Long said the company had carried out a safety audit. The hazard was identified but not acted upon in time.

Following a fatal accident at a paper making plant in Aberdeen in November 1999, other inspections were carried out. It was realised guards were needed but no action was taken by the time of the accident to Mr Holgate.

He told Judge Pirie: "In this case there has been a failure to heed advice."

For the company Mark Monaghan said a lot of money had been spent on improving safety at the plant which had risen from 82nd and bottom of a safety league table in the industry to 16th in five years.

It was simply not perceived by management that people were going to clean the rollers when the machine was still running.