St Albans' paper merchants Aspenlink Ltd have been fined £13,500 after a worker was hit and trapped by a huge reel of paper as it was being loaded at the company’s Brentwood unit in Essex.

Abubakar Soluku, now 45, was in the back of a container lorry as the extra wide 230kg reel rolled towards him and crushed him against the rear.

He suffered a double fracture of his pelvis and an injury to his bladder and was off work for four months.

The Health and Safety Executive said Mr Soluku "could easily" have been killed.

Aspenlink whose offices are at Stroud Wood Business Centre, Park Street, St Albans, pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Magistrates Court to breaching its duty to an employee on September 25, 2013 The company failed to ensure that Mr Soluku, an employee for 15 years, was not exposed to risk when loading the reel.

It was fined £13,500 with £1,320 costs. Magistrate Dawn Roche told joint managing director Jeremy Spring the bench was concerned the company had ignored advice of its own health and safety consultants for three years and that there was no structured system for that type of loading.

HSE prosecutor Keith Waller said there were no written risk assessments and no safe systems of work in existence at the time for that job.

Aspenlink had repeatedly ignored the advice of its own health and safety consultants, he added.

"This incident could easily have resulted in a fatality," he added.

Mitigating, Michael Atkins, for the company, said it apologised. It had accepted liability in a civil claim brought by Mr Soluku.

He added that the small company no longer carried out loading of this type anymore.

At the time there was no-one with responsibility for managing health and safety. It had now appointed someone and spent £14,000 on remedial work.