Being part of Woolworths and being part of this organisation is an absolute privilege.
it's not very often you get an opportunity to lead a Greenfield operation with a
significant capital investment like we have here
and very very proud to be a part of this. We've got just shy of 500 people on this
site and that's been great for Victoria has been great for Melbourne and I'm
great for this community to be able to offer that employment. I don't come from
the meat industry and seeing bandsaws operate and the speed that these guys
use bandsaws scares me. When I sort of went to other sites and watched band
saws an operation if I look at a risk profile that nails it, that's high-risk
activity you know they're moving quickly by close to a high-speed moving blade is
going to amputate fingers and that's sort of stuff they'll keep you awake at
night being a Plant Manager. Any Safety Manager has a goal in mind when when
they come to work to obviously keep their people safe, so the journey
happened around three years ago with obviously the support of SCOTT we decided
to trial all of the new equipment up in our plan in Brisbane. We eventually
decided to do a second trial over near Bunbury facility, based on that success
in the trial when we designed our new purpose-built facility here in Melbourne
we decided to incorporate the latest of technology with the design of the plant.
This equipment allowed us to manage our key risk, and therefore at the end of the day
people go home the same way they came to work. We believe we have the safest
manufacturing plant in the world and definitely BladeStop is a big
contributor to that. The site's recorded five incidents where the BladeStop has
significantly reduced the severity of the outcome. So instead of having
potential lacerations and amputations, we've had some really successful
outcomes we've had some minor lacerations, bandaid injuries and so forth
The first time we ever had someone come in contact with the blade everybody
was sort of very anxious as to the outcome knowing what damage band saws
can do to somebody, so to find out that the injury was actually very
insignificant in terms of it was just a small cut that required a band-aid at
the end of the day may the entire factory obviously a lot
more comfortable if using the system and the culture that that's helped to build
in the safety space for us it has been extremely important as setting the
foundation for safety here at Mecca We've got 10 bandsaws all running 7 days a week
and there's a good morale in the team, everyone knows they're going to
come to work and go home with all their fingers and probably nowhere else in
Australia we can guarantee that working on the bandsaw. When it does go off and no
one is injured it's a key you know you can see a couple of guys giving each
other a bit of a high-five because I know how actually bad that could have
been if they're working in old places they work at. The guys out there will
refuse to use a bandsaw without BladeStop on it now.
We've proven how good they are, how effective they are and how safe they are.
Well I've used bandsaws before I came here and I wasn't too keen on using a bandsaw again until I saw the
BladeStop and started using them, felt confident you know it's a safe saw when
it's used safely, when you've got their confidence you know work better.
With all new technology we've got to bed that technology in, and there can be concerns
around risks to efficiency and speed. We know from the volume of product that
we work through this facility, that we have the best quality product coming out
of this plant compared to our competitors at the best price so there's
no risk around the speed of this technology.
There's definitely as a bedding in process and that's part of the fact when
you bring a new technology and you need to work with it, that has had no impact
on our cost of this plant and we know we put up the best possible quality in the
best price at least price out of these bandsaws so It's good stuff. The fact that that we have
technology like this and Woolworths is partnering with BladesStop is
something extremely special that I'm extremely proud to be a part of. Woolworths is
constantly innovating as far as safety and going to those extra measures to
ensure the safety of our staff on-site. I've worked for Woolworths for 19 years I'm extremely
proud to work for Woolworths. The amount of work Woolworths have done on the safety side
of things you couldn't be any prouder. You can just see there's a lot less
injuries, a better headspace I suppose as well, it was amazing to see, I don't think
there's any way you could work safer in the industry. There are companies that
talk safety's number one, this company gets it and to invest what they have in
time and people really shows that they take this stuff seriously. We wanted
BladeStop here from the get-go, we wanted to have the safest possible kit
from day one to make sure that the people really understood which was
seriously and then we could embed it in our processes from day one.
We like to see this facility as opportunity to have a Center of Excellence for people of
process and the technology. We've been able to do that with this BladeStop
technology. We've been able to get in here and prove it in a very large-scale
operation and with that information will now be able to take that and expand
into the other sites and that can only be good for people, our business and Woolworths