Aletek, NewFresh Foods to boost manufacturing with grants

Two Bundaberg manufacturers are expanding thanks to multimillion grants which are helping keep the regional jobs dream alive. Here, they reveal how they plan to spend it.

With the cost of living reaching new, alarming heights, many are choosing to either flock to, or stay in, regional towns and cities.

Family-owned Bundaberg manufacturer Aletek Australia is just one business striving to keep locals in a job and allow others to take up new opportunities in the region.

The company, which manufactures heavy duty exhaust systems, thermal blankets, emission control, and sound suppression for a wide range of industries including mining, oil and gas, construction, marine and rail, was one of two local businesses to share in $4 million worth of Made in Queensland (MiQ) grants for the Bundaberg region.

The grant has allowed the company to purchase machinery that could reduce turnaround times and significantly boost manufacturing loads, allowing the business to focus on growth.

Taking the Bundaberg NewsMail on a private tour of the factory, Operations Manager Pete Churchill said he understood how important it was for families to not have to “think about moving to the big cities” or who wanted their children to have an opportunity to make a living where they grew up.

“I have three children and they’re even now considering where they’re going to go for work, and that worries dad,” Mr Churchill said.

“With the government getting behind us, we’re able to get the equipment that's going to bring more people who will be more confident to step out and have a go.

“So, I hope my children, and everybody else's children, don’t think ‘am I going to Brisbane? Am I going to Sydney? Am I going to Melbourne? No, I’m going to be in Bundaberg’, so that’s really exciting.”

Mr Churchill also explained how the new equipment bought with the help of the State Government and council grant could allow for better turnaround times for the company’s national and international clients.

“Like most companies in the Wide Bay region, we struggle getting material and equipment and product out of the major cities; they service the major cities first and then we get the rest.

“So we can wait up to between 15 to 20 days from when we’ve placed an order to receive the product.

“We’ve expanded internationally, so we’re six to eight weeks to deliver, so when you take four weeks manufacture time and then add delivery time, it’s four months before we can get overseas so it's just impossible.

“We’ve purchased equipment, one is a laser scanner which gives us much more intricacy in our data acquisition so we can be quick.

“We have two sides of the business where we do fabrication and thermal blankets, which is sewing.

“We hand cut all our product at the moment and because we cut all sides of multiple products, we haven’t been able to find a machine that could do it.

“We now have and it’s not from our industry, it’s from a different industry, but we’re now adapting it.

“We’re now able to repurpose around nine of our people around other areas of our sewing and double our sewing input in the next 12 months.

“Those people will go to a higher wage, which is really exciting.”

Mr Churchill thanked the state and local government for their vital contribution.

“We started talking to the government about assistance because we want to remain regional,” Mr Churchill said.

“Aletek was born and bred in Bundaberg, and we want to keep it that way, so the government really got behind us.

“Working with the both the state and local government has been fantastic.”

The second recipient of the funding, NewFresh Foods, which owns AustChilli and AvoFresh among other lines, manufactures a wide range of plant-based products for the Australian food industry.

The business sells fresh produce to major supermarket retailers, but the exacting specifications means some fresh food is rejected for aesthetic reasons, such as blemishes.

NewFresh Foods Coordinator Finance and Technology Geoff Fisher said the business used to have limited opportunities for imperfect products, but the MiQ funding meant they could now purchase state-of-the-art machinery to extract material from rejected crops so they could be purchased.

“At the moment, Australian nutraceutical and functional food businesses import these plant extracts for their products,” Mr Fisher said.

“We know in Australia we grow superior food products and so if we can also extract the active ingredients, or the effective compounds, that these companies have identified as ingredients for their products, then all the better.

“This support is massive for our region, we are bringing hi-tech manufacturing back into Queensland, creating skilled jobs away from the capital cities, and this will put us at the forefront of our industry.”

Bundaberg MP Tom Smith said funding would also support NewFresh Food’s 52 local jobs.

“This is an outstanding win for local industry and local jobs,” he said.

Minister for Regional Development and Manufacturing Glenn Butcher said manufacturing contributes $20 billion a year to the Queensland economy.

“These grants are giving smaller businesses an opportunity to really think big and make those major purchases that would otherwise be out of reach, and at the same time, benefit to the local economy through jobs growth and business growth.”