A PHARMACEUTICAL company has been fined €7,000 and ordered to pay more than €6,000 in legal costs after it was prosecuted for three health and safety offences arising out of two explosions at its plant in Co Cork last year.
Corden Pharma Ltd, trading as Corden Pharmachem, with registered offices at 90 South Mall, Cork, pleaded guilty following an investigation by the Health and Safety Authority into the two separate accidents in March 2008 at its plant at Little Island, Co Cork.
At Cork District Court yesterday, Judge David Riordan heard the first incident happened when the company was seeking to make safe a quantity of Tetrahydrofuran and magnesium waste but removed the material and put it in drums when the process could not be completed.
One of the stored drums exploded under pressure, damaging the roof of the warehouse. However, no one was in the area at the time, no one was injured and there was no adverse impact on the environment, prosecution barrister Don McCarthy told the court.
Five days later, aqueous cyanide waste was being neutralised in a 10,000-litre vessel at the rear of a building at a remote part of the plant when a ball-bearing contained in a seal overheated, causing an explosion which blew off pipe work and mechanical attachments.
Corden pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to have a proper system of storing chemicals in the first case and the company pleaded guilty to charges of failing to assess risks in dealing with the waste and failing to have a proper seal around the vessel in the second case.
Judge Riordan imposed a fine of €2,000 on Corden for the charge in the first case and fines of €2,500 for each of the offences in the second case while he also ordered the company to pay legal costs and expenses totalling €6,400.