A bakery company and three company directors have been fined £373,000 after two workers died inside a bread oven.

The men were carrying out maintenance work when they became trapped inside the machine where temperatures were above 100C.

They died from burns and heat exposure after being unable to escape.

Fresha Bakeries, trading as Harvestime Bakeries had admitted breaching health and safety regulations.



They were trapped. There was no system of reversing the conveyor and no system of getting them out of the oven

Anthony Barker QC

David Mayes, 47, of Rushey Mead, Leicester, and Ian Erickson, 43, an engineer from Walsall, West Midlands, died after maintenance on the bread oven went wrong at Harvestime's plant in Thurmaston Boulevard, Leicester in May 1998. The men were sent into the oven only two hours after it had been switched off. They climbed in through the bottom and onto a conveyor used to take the dough through the giant machine. All they were wearing for protection were all-in-one suits. Anthony Barker QC, prosecuting, said: "The oven was normally set to run at 260C. It had only been turned off for two hours and the centre was 100C when these two men went inside.



