By Minnesota Historical Society (Flickr: "Police Line" Tape) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Common

A man has been killed in an incident involving a forklift at his Lower Hutt workplace, the second industrial death in Wellington in recent days.

WorkSafe New Zealand is investigating the forklift-related death at a Japanese food importing business in Gracefield, an industrial area of Lower Hutt.

An ambulance crew called police to the site about midday on Monday, police said.

The man died while using the forklift in the warehouse but it appeared nobody saw what happened to him, acting Senior Sergeant Braydon Lenihan said at the scene.

"Nobody witnessed the actual accident so the level of traumatic exposure to staff has thankfully been limited in that regard," Lenihan said.

The mood among staff who waited outside the small importing and distributing facility was sombre while WorkSafe and police examined the scene inside the warehouse where their workmate's body was found.

Police would remove the man's body from the scene, to formally identify him and to contact his next of kin, Lenihan said. 

The incident is the second industrial work death in the Wellington region in recent days.

Last week the driver of a glass recycling truck died in Wellington Hospital after being crushed in the hydraulic lifting equipment of his vehicle in Thorndon.

Twenty-year-old EnviroWaste truck driver Junior Hunt was critically ill in intensive care after the incident on Upton Tce on March 3 but died from his injuries two days later.

EnviroWaste also employs Hunt's father and brother. 

WorkSafe was last week beginning its investigation of that incident too.

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