April 7, 2016
Last week the pallet-building team in the wood workshop at Murgon’s Gumnut Place set an unusual record.
In a single work day (with time off for lunch and tea breaks), six pallet builders and a forklift driver managed to build and stack 290 hardwood pallets – or roughly one complete wooden pallet every 86 seconds.
The workers were filling a standing order for one of Gumnut Place’s clients, the Murgon tannery.
What makes their feat even more remarkable is that all of the workers have disabilities.
* * *
Gumnut Place is an Australian Disability Enterprise which was established in 1986 by a group of families and friends of people with a disability in response to their needs.
It is located at 22 Gore Street, and over the past 30 years has grown not only as a competitive local business providing quality products and services, but also in size.
It now provides supported employment and training opportunities for up to 20 South Burnett residents with permanent disabilities.
South Burnett CTC started managing Gumnut Place in 2008 at the request of the former Murgon Shire Council, and it now has five distinct business units:
- A wood workshop that manufactures heat-treated hardwood and pine pallets, along with blasting and survey pegs, and other timber items including bird feeders and dog beds sold in local shops.
- A commercial kitchen that supplies weekly deliveries of cakes, slices, biscuits and convenience foods like lasagne, potato bake and quiche to three local supermarkets, along with catering for meetings, forums and funerals.
- A commercial laundry that has a five-day-per-week contract to launder work wear for a South Burnett mine, as well as other weekly washing and ironing orders.
- A trophy, engraving and badge-making service that supplies an extensive range of trophies, medallions, shields, awards and commemorative plaques, as well as personalised engraving on almost any surface.
- A secure document destruction service that does shredding for businesses around the region.
The wood workshop has a standing monthly contract to supply a Murgon tannery with hardwood pallets, and recently acquired a seasonal contract to supply treated pine pallets to a large Mundubbera citrus grower.
This is enough to employ 10 permanent part-time supported employees, along with three casuals.
Training opportunities in the division include a General Safety Induction (White Card), forklift licencing, and nail gun operation.
The division also provides a variety of training centred around heat treatment certification, including stencilling and debarking, for its large heat treatment plant.
* * *
Supervisor Jane Badior, who has worked at Gumnut Place for the past five years, said she was very proud of her team’s accomplishment, as were the team members themselves.
“Their previous best was 280 pallets,” Jane said.
“When they’re really going, they can turn out a pallet in under 60 seconds.
“But 290 in a single day is just tremendous.”
Jane said one of the nicest things she’d found about Gumnut Place was that over the years a number of workers have left to take up new, secure jobs elsewhere.
“A couple of our former workers are now employed by the Council, and a few of our commercial kitchen staff have gone on to work in local restaurants and catering businesses,” Jane said.
“Work is important to everyone but it’s particularly important to people with a disability.
“I’m very proud to work here.”
- Related article: A Box Of Hot Air Promises A Bright Future
