A FIRM has been fined £100,000 after a father of two was crushed to death in an horrific works accident.

A judge fined Smurfit UK after hearing how Ian Holgate died at a factory six years after Mark Earnshaw, of Wilson Street, Blackburn, was killed when he fell into a bailing machine at the firm's recycling plant on the Whitebirk Industrial Estate.

Today, Mr Holgate's widow welcomed the huge £100,000 fine imposed on his employers.

Smurfit admitted failing to ensure the safety of workers and particularly Mr Holgate, 29, who was dragged into unguarded rollers on a massive cardboard making machine at Smurfit's Burnley plant on January 26 last year.

Elizabeth Holgate, 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 following the death at its premises in Calder Vale Road, Burnley. The court heard the company was fined £15,000 after the fatal accident at their Blackburn plant in 1995.

Announcing the fine Judge David Pirie said the fact of the matter was that the company gave 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 some 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 prior to the accident.

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

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, of St Giles Terrace, Padiham, 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 the operating 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 great amount 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.

Other workers would use a hose to clean the roller or insist the machine was turned off.

Some time after the accident Smurfit sold the plant which is now operated by the Papermarc company who Mr Monaghan said had inherited a remarkably safe paper mill.