A RELIABLE CONVEYOR
MAINTENANCE SPECIALIST
MAINTENANCE SPECIALIST
Maintaining conveyor belts is not just an essential part of keeping an operation running. It is also vital to prevent serious accidents that can have dire consequences both for the individuals involved and your company.
Conveyor belt repair does not just mean replacing worn-out sections or fixing damage that has arisen in the course of operations to prevent disruption to work. It also means that your firm can ensure it is meeting its obligations under health and safety law.
Sometimes, health and safety is something that is given a bad name when it makes the headlines as a lame excuse for officials to prevent an event from going ahead on spurious grounds. But it is a deadly serious issue when moving machinery is involved.
There are several levels on which a company needs to consider this matter.
The first of these is the general requirement in section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 that: “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees”.
That applies across the board and is meant to act as a catch-all, but, inevitably, some workplaces are more dangerous than others and any situation in which machinery with moving parts is present is going to be among them.
This is why section one goes on to include provisions such as:
Further to this, there is additional guidance concerning equipment such as machinery, including the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER), which provides rules concerning the maintenance and inspection of equipment.
The rules are clear enough, while the importance of compliance needs no overstating. Failures of health and safety can have dire consequences:
There have been examples this year of companies being prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive due to accidents involving conveyors.
In June, it published details of a case relating to an incident in 2024 at the premises of Bristol-based Bateman Skips, a waste and recycling facility.
In attempting to clear a blockage, the worker’s arm was dragged into the conveyor, leading to severe injuries including multiple arm fractures, lacerations, nerve damage and a broken rib.
The injuries were life-changing as the worker now has restricted use of his arm and can no longer undertake the activities they did before.
In this case, the maintenance failure under the PUWER regulations was in not having guards in place to prevent access to the machinery, along with a basic failure under section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The fine was huge, with the company having to pay £64,666, plus £4,657 in costs.
A similar case occurred in 2024 at Mains of Auchbadie Farm near Banff, where the lack of an adequate guard led to a worker trying to clean an egg conveyor getting his clothing trapped in it.
The worker suffered nerve damage in both arms, with a worse fate being avoided as he had managed to hit the emergency stop button. The farm’s parent company, Duncan Farms, ended up being fined £53,000.
Health and Safety inspector Jurate Gruzaite said: “Had appropriate fixed guards been in place at the drive end of these conveyors, this injury would not have happened.”
Guards are not the only consideration. A conveyor belt that snaps could have a whiplash effect that threatens anyone standing nearby, while any conveyor so damaged that the material it is carrying might fall off could pose a serious threat to anyone working below.
If a problem does arise with your conveyor, either because the belt itself is failing or because some other part of the machinery (including the guard) is defective, the obvious first step is to turn it off to prevent any risk of injury. However, this does mean slowing down your work.
Whether you want to get a project, such as excavating a tunnel, back up and running swiftly to hit deadlines, or need to resume functions such as moving perishable consumer goods on an everyday basis as soon as possible, we can help.
Our track record of getting repair work done fast means that you can soon resume work with a conveyor that is both safe and functional, enabling you to get it running again without posing a health and safety risk.