Berry grower Costa has launched a new recruitment campaign aiming to attract out of work Tasmanians to help fill 2000 jobs during the upcoming harvest period.
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Costa regional manager, Cameron Folder, said Costa Berries had farms at East Devonport, Wesley Vale, Sulphur Creek, Dunorlan, and Lebrina. He said for the last four or five years, Costa's recruitment team, "made a conscious effort" to give any Tasmanian resident deemed fit for work a go.
However, he said up until this year; Costa still saw relatively fewer Tasmanians take up picking jobs and with alternate labour such as backpackers and overseas workers most got filled by those workers.
With the change in labour availability this year due to COVID-19 border restrictions, Costa has just introduced its new recruiting campaign "Our Pick Adventure" to encourage Tasmanians to apply for jobs.
"We grow blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, producing up to 70 per cent of the State's blueberries. We also operate a major distribution centre at East Devonport in Brooke Street," Mr Folder said.
He was speaking at Costa's Wesley Vale Raspberry Farm which is overseen by farm manager Blaine Astell, who joined the company in 2012, at 17, as a crop maintenance worker.
"Around 2000 positions will be available across our harvest, which runs from November through to around May," Mr Folder said.
"The peak of our season is from December to March. The majority of these positions are for picking and packing, but we also need supervisors, truck drivers, and forklift drivers.
"We believe we will be able to harvest our crop this season. Our Pick Adventure campaign...aims to attract locals, and we are working with schools and other job organisations to encourage people to take up our positions.
"We also look forward to seeing the details of incentives for agricultural workers, which are expected to be announced in the Federal Budget.
"We are obviously concentrating on sourcing local workers, but also welcomed the announcement from the Premier the other week that workers could come into the State to harvest crops as we believe we will also need to tap into this source of labour."
People can apply for jobs online and at Costa's Brooke Street distribution centre.
"The opportunity is there for pickers to earn some pretty good money well above the award base rate," Mr Folder said.
Mr Astell said after working for Costa he saw the diverse career opportunities in agriculture.
"In the beginning, I was unsure how much of a career this would offer, but I learned just how big a company it is and how big the opportunities are. I benefited from development programs to progress from weeding and pruning jobs to supervisory roles and farm foreman. Now I manage 85 hectares of raspberries here at Wesley Vale," he said.
"There's a lot of opportunity in agriculture, and the diversity of Costa means we have accountants, irrigation workers, machinery operators, pickers, pruners, and all different types. If you turn up every day with a good work ethic, you will get noticed, and there's plenty of development opportunity."
To find out more visit Costa's website at https://costagroup.com.au/pick-adventure/.
