Endeavour Foundation’s work with the food and beverage industry, along with supports for employees from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has helped the company solidify its place within the industry, leading to successful growth.
Simon Cook, general manager of Business Solutions at Endeavour Foundation, said the work the company does is something he holds close to his heart. And it’s something that brings him and the entire team a great deal of pride.
“We have the best workforce that I’ve had the pleasure of leading and I genuinely mean that,” he said.
“My team are engaged, consistent, take pride in high quality output, are safe, and deliver amazing outcomes. This creates an enormous amount of pride around the team we have at Endeavour Foundation and the outcome for everyone is very important.”
Endeavour Foundation helps people with disability reach their employment goals, and by extension life goals, while also providing several solutions to various industries, including food
and beverage.
“One of the constructs we must have through the NDIS are individual support plans, which requires goals,” said Cook.
“Goal number one is always about wanting to have meaningful work.
“For my team they want to be part of something bigger and contribute and we can provide a good quality outcome for our commercial customers but also great employment outcomes for people
with disability.”
Cook said the disability service provider’s work with the food and beverage industry was one of the key pillars of the organisation and it also provides fertile ground for helping his team achieve their employment goals.
“The four key things we do are general food packing, document destruction and shredding, resource recovery, and timber milling including stakes and peg production,” he said.
“We have diversity but one of our primary planks is supporting the food and beverage industry.
“We provide commercially viable solutions to industries and help them solve their problems. One of the biggest is capacity and production challenges.”
While food and beverage manufacturing has various sizes of production processes, many are high volume, an area for which Endeavour Foundation thrives in providing solutions.
“If you’ve got a mass production process and an end user client that has a specific packing requirement you can’t set an entire factory line to deliver that, you need someone to adjust that for you,” said Cook.
“We take the challenges that the industry faces and deliver solutions while helping our people achieve their employment goals.”
Vicki Nguyen, director, Jomeis Fine Foods, has worked with Endeavour Foundation and was full of praise for the work that the organisation does.
“We have been working with Endeavour Foundation for many years now and have always been super impressed with their speedy turnaround time and outstanding customer service,” she said.
“Being a small family business, it is important for us to be nimble and do small yet frequent runs to ensure not too much money is tied up in stock at any one time.
“Endeavour Foundation allows us to do exactly that. They have been a wonderful find for us. We have full confidence that as we grow Endeavour Foundation will be able to manage that growth and be on that journey with us each step of the way.”
Arianne Sackville, founder and owner of Bell & Bone, was equally impressed by the partnership with
Endeavour Foundation.
“Bell & Bone is proud of its partnership with Endeavour Foundation,” she said.
“Since day one, they have made me feel a part of their community and shown me how much my business means to each and every employee there.
“We have worked closely on projects with great success as they always go above and beyond for me and my brand. They are meticulous with their work and make sure that each Bell & Bone product goes out the door
looking fantastic.”
The positive feedback about Endeavour Foundation is a clear indicator of the organisation’s aims.
“We are large enough to cope but small enough to care. We’ve got the agility that allows us to not only do things quickly but also tailored to the customers’ needs,” said Cook.
“This enables some of the larger players to participate in markets they possibly wouldn’t have been able
to before.”
One of Endeavour Foundation’s packing solutions has manufacturers sending product to their social enterprises for rework, or to be packed for retail ready purchase.
“For example, we have products manufactured in America, which are then imported into Australia, but it can’t hit the shelves here until it is repackaged to fit our market requirements,”
said Cook.
And in terms of volume, Cook said a current product within this model is being sent in pallets of two dozen at a time, indicating the packing capacity of Endeavour Foundation.
“That one is a classic example of packing rework where to be compliant you must adhere to the rules,”
Cook added.
However, the main pillar of Endeavour Foundation’s solutions and employment goals for its team members revolves around decanting of bulk goods.
“We have three major food packing locations where we do work for brands that are household names in the food and beverage industry,” said Cook.
The filling is done with a million-dollar machine, showing how Endeavour Foundation’s workforce is able to work within the food and beverage industry, and well.
“From hand filling a small amount all the way through to doing several thousand units a day is where our capacity sits,” said Cook.
“Something that’s really important around how we work in the market is that we run on a very tight food safety and quality management system and its important to recognise that we work to those standards, and we are also certified for organics, halal, kosher.”
Cook said ultimately all of Endeavour Foundation’s business activities had one shared purpose.
We value each and every business that partners with us because when you do business with Endeavour Foundation, you enable our employees to aspire to, and accomplish, their employment goals.