ACR-News

COLD storage firm Cold Move must pay £35,000 in fines plus £6,116 costs for health and safety breaches at its Wigan depot in 2005, where its employee died from exposure to an ammonia leak.
Two and a half tonnes of ammonia leaked from a refrigeration system at Cold Move's depot in September 2005.

Engineer Alan Golden died while draining oil from the oil cooler of a compressor. Cold Move's health and safety breaches included failure to fit self-closing valves which could have limited the leak. The incident lead to the firm's prosecution being brought by Wigan Council’s environmental health officers.

Cold Move admitted breaching section two of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 by failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of its employees.

Judge Nigel Gilmour QC speaking at Liverpool Crown court, stressed that as no-one could be sure of what occurred, there could be no causative link between the safety breaches and the engineer's death.

A spokesman for Cold Move said 'We have cooperated fully with Wigan Council's thorough investigation into this accident and concur with the Judge's sentencing remarks that any shortcomings that existed in our health and safety arrangements at the time of this accident, which have now long since been resolved to the satisfaction of Wigan Council, were not causative of Alan's death.'