PROCESSING
Local solutions cut down on lead times Packserv Australia has placed the emphasis on supplying locally manufactured and easy to use technologies to the food and beverage industry, which significantly cuts down on lead times. Adam McCleery writes.
Packserv started as a rental and technical service provider but has continued to diversify its offerings.
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or the past 16 years Packserv Australia has built a reputation as the country’s leading rental and technical service providers for the food and beverage industry, particularly SME’s. Nathan Wardell, Packserv Australia managing director, said the company started out as a rental and technical service provider before continually diversifying its offerings. “We began importing, distributing, and reselling other people’s machinery about six years ago and then three years ago we started designing and building our own machinery, so now we are a full-service manufacturer. Which means we can supply complete production lines and turnkey solutions. It has been a long journey, we now have in house CAD and CNC capabilities where we can take a client’s problem, draw a solution, and be holding the finished part ready to install in very little time”. Wardell said one of the key driving factors behind the evolution of Packserv Australia was the notion that if parts can be manufactured locally, then they should be. Not just to cut back on lead times, but making your own parts also allows rapid updates around design, which is a prerequisite for innovation,
and without the inherent risks to IP that have proved so painful in the past. He adds, “If you’re still not convinced, then the environmental implications surely serve to win any argument. Leaving aside for a moment the very real and obvious environmental cost of shipping manufactured goods from one side of the world to the other, adopting, or even aspiring to, a carbon neutral model for manufacturing can only ever be disingenuous if we
continue to offshore responsibility for manufacturing the things that can and should be made here in Australia”. Possibly the only positive to come out of the Covid pandemic was the stark realisation of how much we did rely on imported goods. International supply chains that previously appeared so strong were revealed to be more akin to international paper chains, and wet ones at that. In practical terms, it’s possibly the
Packserv grew into a full-service manufacturer with the ability to supply complete production lines.
32 Food&Beverage Industry News | November 2022 | www.foodmag.com.au
lead times on imported technology and machinery that creates the biggest headaches for local food and beverage manufacturers. Making these things locally whenever possible, is one of the best ways to allow local businesses to keep up with the ever-increasing rate of changes in food and beverage manufacturing processes. Packserv has several technology partnerships running in parallel with its own internal product development.