What an accident really costs a warehouse in 2026
The 2025 AT/MP cost scale, the warehousing accident figures and the contribution rate: what a lost-time accident costs, line by line, and why prevention does not sell on avoided accidents alone.
An HSE manager does not read a cost scale for pleasure. They read it because a lost-time accident has just happened and management wants to know what it will cost. This post puts the most recent public figures side by side, adds the estimates of our market study while labelling them as such, and ends with an honest remark on what prevention really pays back.
Warehousing: 1.6 times more accidents than the national average
The 2024 figures for non-refrigerated warehousing (French activity code NAF 52.10B) give the scale of the problem.1
| Indicator, NAF 52.10B, 2024 | Value |
|---|---|
| Employees | 106,769 |
| Lost-time accidents | 4,517 |
| Frequency index (accidents per 1,000 employees) | 42.3, against 26.4 national average |
| New permanent disabilities | 288 |
| Lost working days | 515,000 |
| Compensated days per accident, on average | 114 |
| Share of accidents leaving a permanent disability | 6.4% |
Brought down to one site, it reads simply: at a frequency index of 42.3, a 200-employee platform has about 8.5 lost-time accidents a year, a 70-employee site about 3.2
The 2025 scale: what each accident costs the scheme
The direct cost is set by the annual scale of average costs, the one used to compute each establishment’s AT/MP (occupational accidents and diseases) contribution. For national technical committee C, which covers warehousing, the 2025 scale is as follows.3
| Temporary disability | Average cost | Permanent disability | Average cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| No time off or under 4 days | €238 | Rate under 10% | €2,282 |
| 4 to 15 days | €553 | 10 to 19% | €65,871 |
| 16 to 45 days | €1,773 | 20 to 39% | €127,944 |
| 46 to 90 days | €4,664 | 40% and more, or death | €564,554 |
| 91 to 150 days | €8,786 | ||
| Over 150 days | €36,606 |
The 2026 scale raises each line by about 2.5%; a death is counted at €588,090.3
Two things stand out. The first is the gap between a short absence and a long one: a factor of 150 between the first line and the last. The second is the weight of a single serious event: one death or severe disability weighs as much as hundreds of minor accidents.
From the scale to the site’s cost: about €17,000 per accident
Weighting these costs by a typical distribution of absence durations and disability rates, our study estimates the average direct cost of a lost-time accident in warehousing at €5,600 (study estimate).2 Indirect costs, replacement, lost production, supervision time, investigation, material damage, social climate, are put by most prevention specialists at two to three times the direct cost; the study retains a multiplier of 2. A lost-time accident therefore costs the site about €17,000, a third of which goes through the contribution (study estimate).2
For the 200-employee platform above, 8.5 accidents a year come to roughly €145,000 a year. That is not a figure anyone sees on a budget line; it is spread between the contribution, team leaders’ hours and temporary workers called in at short notice. That is exactly why it is underestimated.
The AT/MP contribution: your accidents set your price
The AT/MP contribution is paid by the employer as a percentage of payroll. The national average net rate is 2.12% in 2025.3 How it is calculated depends on company headcount:
- collective (the branch rate) under 20 employees;
- mixed from 20 to 149 employees, where the establishment’s own claims count in part;
- individual from 150 employees, where the rate is computed on the claim costs of the last three known years.
A death or a severe disability therefore enters this calculation for three years. For a platform on individual rating, it is the single event that changes the rate of the whole site for the next three financial years.2
An honest remark on what prevention pays back
Our study is clear on a point that safety-tool vendors rarely say out loud: avoided accidents alone do not pay for a prevention tool.2 Even with a credible reduction in the share of accidents linked to situations visible on camera, the annual gain on that line alone stays below the price of a subscription for an average site.
What tips the balance are three other lines: HSE hours recovered (rounds, findings, photos, minutes), audits and visits prepared from a history instead of a week of work, and the effect, delayed by two years, on the contribution rate. And what appears in no table is the tail risk: a death at €564,554 plus prosecution, or a fire, exceeds the subscription ten to a hundred times over. Prevention is best presented as insurance: it reduces the probability and, above all, proves diligence if the event occurs.
Where to start
Take your last three lost-time accidents. For each, note the duration, the matching line of the scale, and whether the situation that preceded it was visible on one of the site’s cameras. If two out of three were, you know where to look for the next thirty days.
Sources
- Assurance Maladie, Risques professionnels: 2024 claims statistics by NAF code (52.10B, non-refrigerated warehousing and storage). ameli.fr/entreprise
- Camly AI, market-fit study, French warehouses, October 2026 (hypotheses H2 to H6; amounts marked “study estimate” are to be validated in pilots).
- Assurance Maladie, Risques professionnels: scale of average costs 2025 and 2026, national technical committee C; national average net rate 2025. ameli.fr/entreprise