McWilliams Wines, one of Australia’s largest and most highly regarded family-owned wine companies, considers the investment in staff training as vital to its continued success.
In order to ensure staff are up to date in all aspects of vineyard operations, McWilliams support their employees to undertake the latest training at TAFE NSW – Riverina Institute’s Wine and Food Technology Centre.
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The largest of McWilliams five sites at Hanwood (Griffith) produces an average crush of 30,000 tonnes of grapes every season and boasts a storage capacity of more than 45 million litres.
Tending to this precious crop, nine vineyard hands undertake all manner of activities from canopy management, soil management, irrigation, disease control, pruning, ground cover and weed control.
‘The quality of training provided by Riverina Institute is very good,’ said Geoff McKorkelle, Technical Manager, McWilliams Riverina. ‘The course materials were able to be fine-tuned to suit our needs and focus on learning areas that are relevant to our operations.’
Mr McKorkelle said an understanding of operations is vital to succession planning at McWilliams.
‘Having people on the ground who are well-trained and can step into roles is important for our site. The training helps provide our people with an understanding about what they are doing and the reason they are doing it. It puts everything into perspective so they can be part of the whole process.’
Joy Stocker, Relieving Director, Riverina Institute, said the Wine and Food Technology Centre was established to provide specialised training in wine and food production.
‘When you consider that on a national scale, Australia has about 2,000 wine companies and the sector employs around 31,000 people, this is a fairly significant industry to be involved in,’ Ms Stocker said.
‘And as each of these companies does business differently, it’s important for us to be flexible in the delivery of our training and ensure that our clients, like McWilliams, receive training which has been tailored to meet their specific needs.’
Training ranges from traditional face-to-face methods through to workplace training and assessment as well as traineeships. The training can be either part-time or full-time depending on requirements, in areas as diverse as food quality, cellar induction, bottling and food testing.
Ms Stocker said that while the Riverina Wine and Food Technology Centre is located close to the wine producing regions in north east Victoria and the Riverina, training can be tailored for vineyards farther afield.
