Increasing production efficiencies through innovation

For 40 years Speciality Trees has been cultivating environmentally sustainable, containerised trees for supply into commercial and residential developments, landscaping projects, local government, urban developments and retail nurseries.

We pot up to 4,000 trees per week, (some can personally do 500 a week!), posing a significant manual handling risk as the team is required to frequently bend, shovel soil and lift heavy pots of soil. This activity alone exposed our staff to fatigue, strains and sprains.

To mitigate the risk of musculoskeletal injuries and increase productivity, our management team consulted with employees and engineers before designing and building a potting machine uniquely ours, to move this laborious function to chest height. Our machine facilitates the potting of trees six times faster than what we were doing previously. It also eliminates shovelling and requires far less manual handling to move the trees back into the nursery once they have been potted.

On Thursday 18th October 2018 at the 30th annual Victorian Worksafe Awards night, Speciality Trees was one of three finalists in the category "Best Solution to a Manual Handling Issue" and while we did not win, all of us there were blown away by the ingenuity of each entry.  We were certainly in great company.

Our nomination as a finalist for this award recognises our attention to the safety and physical well being of our staff and our innovative attitude to improving production efficiency.