Dairy Innovation Australia Limited (DIAL) is on to a winner.
The Werribee company has capped off a busy start to 2015 by winning the professional services category at the recent Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame awards.
The awards, which have run since 2001, celebrate individuals and companies whose innovation and drive helps make the state’s manufacturing sector competitive.
DIAL chief executive Lesley Macleod said it was a great boost for the company to win such a prestigious award. “We’re a small company and weren’t awfully optimistic we could win the category, so we’re really pleased and excited,”
she said.
Ms Macleod said the company, which has 28 employees, was undergoing a radical restructure from a dairy research and development company to a professional services consultancy. “We’ve been doing a lot more one-on-one work, both with our member companies and developing a small dairy network that services just under 40 small dairy companies in Victoria, and we’re expanding that into two other states.
“We’re actually now doing more of a commercial operation on that side of the business and we’ve still got a research investment on behalf of the members.
“The whole team needs to be congratulated, because everyone’s worked really hard to start moving that restructure from being a member-based research company to developing a commercial professional services company to service the food industry.”
Also at the awards ceremony, Anna Reid, site manager of two Asahi beverage plants in Laverton and Tullamarine, was named ‘young manufacturer of the year’.
Charlene Macaulay
