Landscapers switch to sanitisation

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, landscaping brothers Jack and Will Martin saw an opening for sanitising buildings.

Jack and Will Martin have switched their landscaping business to training staff to swab buildings clean of coronavirus germs. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Jack and Will Martin’s high-end commercial landscaping and maintenance business was going gangbusters until the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Major clients in the property, construction, tourism, and hospit­ality sectors called, one after the other, freezing contracts and putting future work in doubt.

The brothers had nearly 50 staff in their Brisbane business, and it was personal: they knew their birthdays, their partners, and their kids. “Putting people off was never an option,” Jack Martin said.

So theirs became the lates­t in a string of businesses to swiftly switch focus, survive and thrive despite the pandemic. Breweries are distilling alcohol for hand-sanitiser, plastic manufacturers are making medical masks, racing car engineers are developing a prototype ventilator.

The Martins looked at their existin­g operation, its technology, staff and skills, and observed what businesses in China and Europe were doing. They found a gap in the market: external sanit­isation, using hospital-grade disinfectant to sanitise high-traffic areas such as handrails, lift ­buttons, bins, bike racks, letter boxes and intercoms in major commercial properties.

They contacted their existing landscaping clients, including Stockland, Colliers International, aged-care operator Palm Lake Group, and the Emporium Hotel at South Bank, and just like that their business is going gangbusters again.

In the few weeks since they moved into infection prevention and control, they’ve been able to keep their original 50 staff and hire 50 more. In the next few weeks, they’re planning to expand interstate, and hire another 150 people.

More than 6000 people have applied for jobs as sanitisers; a human resources manager ­position with the Martins got 132 applications in just 24 hours.

“For myself as a businessman, and an Australian citizen, this is as close as I can get to the frontline. We’re not doctors, we’re not medical professionals … this is the most helpful we can be to the Australian community,” Jack Martin said.

All of their staff do an Aust­ralian government COVID-19 infecti­on control online course, and are then subjected to two days of intense training at Martin Brothers’ new Lytton warehouse.

One of the first things the brothers did was to call in the expert­s, assembling a crack team of scientists, doctors, and academics to give them advice on the latest COVID-19 scientific research via WhatsApp and Zoom.

University lecturer and human behaviour expert Jemma King said the panel included a surgeon, doctors, a virologist and an envir­onmental chemist, who, analysing new studies, translated them into digestible, usable information.

When the coronavirus crisis has passed, Jack said the brothers wanted to return to landscaping, the business they started in 2014, when it was just them, a ute, and a couple of wheelbarrows.