Coroner looks into safety of compacting machine after Western Junction employee’s death

A coroner has handed down his findings into the workplace death of a printing company employee, who was fatally crushed almost a decade ago.

Woolston Printing at Western Junction. Picture: Google Street View

A coroner has handed down his findings into the workplace death of a printing company employee, who was fatally crushed almost a decade ago.

Daniel Thomas Knight, 43, was raking paper offcuts at Woolston Printing in the Northern Midlands in November 2014 when he entered a compaction unit to unblock it.

In his findings published on Friday, Coroner Robert Webster said the husband and father died at the Launceston General Hospital after the fatal accident at the Western Junction factory.

Mr Webster said a charge of breaching a health and safety duty was laid against the printing and bookbinding company in 2016 after an investigation by WorkSafe Tasmania.

However, the charge was discontinued in 2023 with no evidence tendered on the complaint, with prosecutors deciding there was “no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction”.

Mr Webster said Mr Knight worked for Woolston Printing about two days a week in the lead-up to his death, with his duties to clean, sweep, manage the wastepaper from the outside hopper and place it into bins, make boxes, and place some documents through a shredding machine.

When his co-workers found him after being crushed, they commenced CPR until an ambulance arrived, but he died in hospital later the same day.

Mr Webster found the compactor had been incorrectly installed, meaning it became frequently blocked.

He also found Mr Knight had entered the compactor with a garden rake to clear it, and that the equipment was still connected to mains electricity and air pressure at the time.

While inside the machine, Mr Knight accidentally knocked a ram, which caused it to retract and for him to be crushed inside.

Daniel Knight's grave at Kings Meadows Cemetery.

The man who co-designed the compactor said his company offered to install the machine, but Woolston Printing did not accept that offer, and that it did not request training or a written instruction manual.

No-one from his company assessed the site to assess its suitability for the compactor when Woolston Printing bought it in April 2014.

Mr Webster said if a properly-installed rotary valve, airlock or air balancing fan be installed, the compactor would not have been jammed and required unblocking.

However, he said because of the incorrect installation, the compactor had to be unblocked about every 10 minutes.

He also noted there was no evidence of Woolston Printing having an isolation procedure for the compactor, and that aspects of the machine were non-compliant with safety standards.

The company said after the machine had malfunctioned earlier that year, Mr Knight had been instructed not to touch it until it was fixed, but that the unit had started up use again two days before the tragedy.

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