Doing our bit to keep food in fridges
Right now, our people and our farmers are working hard to keep milk flowing and factories running to make sure dairy foods are making it to supermarket shelves – they’re doing their bit for Australia during COVID-19.
But, for this to happen we’ve put in place stringent protocols and measures to keep our people, our farmers, and our communities safe.
We take our role as an essential service very seriously. It’s a privilege and a responsibility that we don’t take lightly.
This means things look and feel a bit different at our sites, and our people are having to adapt.
Steve Taylor our Regional Operations Manager in the North says in his 33 years of working in dairy and food production he has never seen anything quite like it.
“For us, this is a first. We’ve acted quickly and have actioned our business continuity plans which set out the actions required by us to respond to situations such as this.
“Everything we do now has an extra couple of layers, but our people have fronted into this challenge head on. Everyone knows the important role they play in stopping the spread and protecting production.
“Our pandemic response is in place, and part of this is educating and implementing infection control.
“Things like practicing social distancing – making sure we’re 1.5 metres apart, increasing the cleaning and sanitisation of our work areas, increasing our use of PPE, as well as limiting the number of people we have on site.
“We also have to plan ahead and ensure continuity, so we’ve made sure we have enough materials of not only gloves, sanitiser and wipes, but also things like our product packaging and ingredients,” says Steve.
No one can predict how long this will last, but our processing, scheduling, logistics and delivery activities in all our markets are largely operating as normal.