The final moments before a maintenance engineer was fatally crushed by a robotic arm at his place of work were today played to a jury at Bradford Crown Court.

Andrew Tibbott was pinned by the lifting arm to a conveyor 14 seconds after he walked through a gap in the safety fencing at garden landscaping supplies firm Deco-Pak Limited.

The footage of him entering the RM packaging machine’s robotic cell to clean or adjust a sensor was shown in court by prosecutor Allan Compton QC who accuses the company of having “a scant regard” for health and safety.

The trial has heard that Mr Tibbott, 48, died on Good Friday, 2017, after the “powerful and dangerous” robotic arm swung into action while he was doing maintenance work.

Deco-Pak, of Deco House on Halifax Road, Hipperholme, near Brighouse, denies the corporate manslaughter of Mr Tibbott.

Company directors, Rodney Slater, 62, of Wellbank View, Rochdale, and Michael Hall, 64, of Hullen Edge Lane, Elland, plead not guilty to Mr Tibbott’s manslaughter by gross negligence.

Deco-Pak and Hall have admitted failing to ensure that employees were not exposed to risk. Slater denies that charge.

The jury has heard that Mr Tibbott had been working for the company for six weeks when he was crushed to death by the machine.

The prosecution alleges that Deco-Pak “had no interest in running the RM machine safely.”

“They encouraged a culture of production at all costs, putting the lives of employees at risk,” Mr Compton said.

He told the jury that the machine was still operational when Mr Tibbott entered the robot-ic cell. It was in automatic mode awaiting a signal. When he cleaned or adjusted a sensor it detected an empty pallet, dropped a bag and swung back to collect a new one.

Mr Compton said CCTV footage of the factory before Mr Tibbott’s death showed em-ployees entering the robotic cell when it was “live and capable of doing what it did to Mr Tibbott.”

He alleged that his training was “inadequate and not focused on safety.”

Documents recovered by the police from Deco-Pak showed that risk assessments were “paperwork exercises” rather than the basis for effective health and safety,” Mr Compton alleged.

Hall was interviewed by the police in June 2018 and said that the training of new em-ployees was “ongoing.” They would begin on the wrapping machines and then move on to the packing lines.

He said they were provided with protective clothing and the company took health and safety very seriously.

Hall said that at the time of Mr Tibbott’s death, Slater was in charge of health and safety.

He stated that in a previous incident when an employee was injured, the robotic arm had only “brushed” him.

“If it had trapped him it would have killed him,” he said.

He told the police he had never seen an employee enter the cell while the robot was oper-ational.

When he was asked: “Did you realise how dangerous the machine can be?” he replied: “Yes.”

Slater declined to answer the police’s questions, Mr Compton said.

But in a prepared statement he said he wasn’t familiar with the machine’s operations or functions and relied on the expertise of those who had received specialist training from RM.

He said he was at a loss to see how he had breached his duty of care to Mr Tibbott.

The trial, expected to last six weeks, continues.