It is amazing what happens when an entrepreneur and an engineer get together and it is even more amazing when local businesses, council and the community get behind them.
Rachel Baigent is the CEO of Witmore Ltd, a social enterprise that offers meaningful work to people with a disability. She is always looking for a way to expand the business and improve operations to give her clients an interesting day at work.
A couple of doors down at the Maison Dieu industrial area just outside of Singleton is Morgan Engineering and these successful organisations share a close relationship with Morgan General Manager Jeremy Brett and Rachel often having a chat about business.
One of those chats resulted in the design and construction of Witmore’s latest piece of equipment, the stake sharpener.
Witmore creates thousands of stakes each week primarily for the mining industry and until now, it has been a task with an element of risk and only a small proportion of the supported employees at Witmore could do it.
With the creation of the stake sharpener that has a pencil sharpener-based design, 95 per cent of the workforce can do it and Rachel could not be more delighted.
“This stake sharpener is designed to sharpen a piece of wood on all corners in a single insertion,” Rachel said.
“We have supported employees with varying skill levels and tasks like this are often labour intensive. Many of our supported employees may not feel comfortable using tools like saws and this machine addresses that challenge by providing a safe and simple alternative.
“With no exposed blades and an easy to use design, it functions similarly to a large pencil sharpener, allowing all participants to safely engage in woodwork activities,” she said.
The idea came from Morgan Engineering with Jeremy amazed that such a simple design can make such an incredible difference.
“The engineering is simple with control of the machine entirely in the hands of the operator, there are limit switches, emergency stop switches, guard protection and the trick was making something that was safer but still had a component of labour intensity to give the employees meaningful work,” Jeremy said.
“The employees paint the survey pegs by hand so now we are asking ourselves if we can create a product to streamline that process as well, making sure we don’t take jobs away but make something that is labour intensive more efficient.”
Singleton Council’s Community Economic Development Fund, which is supported by Bloomfield and Glencore, funded the project to the tune of $21,000 with Morgan Engineering designing and funding the remainder in collaboration with Harris Electrical, who donated time completing electrical work, testing and with the implementation phase of the project, and Metalert who also contributed.
Rachel said she was so sincerely delighted to see Singleton come together for such a wonderful project.
Rachel and her Witmore colleagues are on a high now after the success of a recent trivia night that raised $25,000 to go towards the purchase of a food and coffee van, but they still have a way to go to reach their goal of $100,000.
In the meantime they are establishing their Inclusive Eats social enterprise. Originally operating from their Riverside Park café in John Street Singleton, Glencore provided funding to bring the kitchen up to commercial standards at the Witmore Maison Dieu site.
Now they can cater for a variety of events and prepare catering boxes for businesses and events.
Part of the process is giving the clients and staff a taste test and if the morning tea served at the stake sharpener launch is anything to judge, Inclusive Eats is sure to be a tasty hit.
Congratulations must also go to Jeremy and Rachel, who went head-to-head at Singleton Business Awards on July 19 competing for the title of best business leader of more than 21 staff.
Jeremy ultimately won the award but Rachel could not be more delighted and was probably the loudest cheer emanating from the 200-strong crowd.
