Case Studies
Living the Dream Safely at Golden Bay Fruit
Golden Bay is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful spots in New Zealand, producing some of the best fruit in the world. Imagine living in this little slice of paradise, working in the sun, producing top-quality fruit, and doing it all safely. For the Golden Bay Fruit Company, that’s no dream; it’s their daily life. Business has been growing steadily over the years, and they needed to expand their infrastructure by building a large new packhouse. Considering the financial investment, the type of work that happens in these spaces, and the need to protect people and assets for the long term, safety protection was a top priority. That’s where we came in. Our 610-1 Barrier was the perfect choice for protection against side swipes from passing vehicles, while also creating a clear pedestrian walkway so staff on foot can feel safe moving around the plant. We also recommended our Personnel Gates to slow down pedestrian traffic at the main vehicle thoroughfares, giving peace of mind to drivers and those on foot. Then it was time to move from people protection to asset protection, looking after the newly installed industrial doors. Not only are these a high-value asset, but there is also the downtime for repairs and parts to consider. In some cases, our barrier or standard bollards provided ample protection from damage, but as some of these doors were exposed to larger vehicles, our Door Frame Bollards were the protection of choice — a full-framed approach to protection from the ground up. We’re very proud to have helped Golden Bay Fruit make this a safer space for their people and their facilities from the outset. After all, we want them living the dream, safely, for many years to come.
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A Prime Example of Safety at Prime Range Meats
Welcome to Prime Range Meats, a New Zealand-based supplier and processor of meats and small goods, delivering door-to-door around the country. Like many processing plants we’ve seen, the volume of traffic and pedestrians is increasing - and so are the associated risks. With door-to-door delivery and a high volume of meats being processed, the inwards and outwards goods are constantly moving on site. Trucks, forklifts, staff, site visitors, public shoppers at their retail store, and delivery drivers all make for constant activity. While there were designated heavy traffic areas on site, the deteriorating painted warnings weren’t cutting the mustard anymore. To avoid any kind of disaster, we worked alongside the Prime Range team to create clearly defined safety zones, installing our 910-2 barrier in the most hazardous spots. Combined with our personnel gates to ensure safe crossings in the shared zones, this made for a much safer site. With personnel safety now sorted, we also helped prevent damage to their facilities. We’ve all seen areas on site that are notorious for forklift bumps and scrapes, so we installed bollards at key corners and doorways, acting as both a visual reminder and a sturdy shield. If your site has a few forklift scrapes you’d like sorted, or you have high-traffic areas that need more than a fresh lick of paint, we’re happy to help. Chat to our team about making your workplace a safer one.
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Small but Mighty: How Silver Fern Farms Waitane Stays Safe
We’re no strangers to installing our range at meat processing plants, after all, we know each has its own hazards, traffic management requirements, pedestrian areas, and special requests. So, when Silver Fern Farms Waitane, a small sheep processing plant located in Southland, NZ, got in touch, we were happy to help. This small but mighty plant contributes significantly to the supply of quality lamb for domestic and international markets. Common in these types of environments, we always see plenty of stock and freight trucks, vehicles, forklifts, pedestrians, and of course, livestock. The Waitane Health & Safety management team wanted to create clearer pathways on site for staff and visitors, adding extra layers of protection with barrier, hand rail, and personnel gates for critical access points. We were more than happy to provide ideas and advice for different zones around the site, resulting in barrier configurations tailored to the level of risk and traffic type. Our 610-1 Barrier + Hand Rail and 910-2 Barrier were popular choices, providing visibly clear and well-protected zones. We also constructed Driver Protection Zones for visiting truck drivers, keeping them safe as their trucks are loaded and unloaded. We’re always up for a challenge, no matter the size, scope, or livestock on site. If you’re thinking about ways to make your workplace safer, we’re here to help. Contact our team today for more information or read more about our other projects with Silver Fern Farms here.
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A One-Stop Safety Shop for Woolworths CFDC
A one-stop safety shop — that’s how you might describe us. Especially during the Primary Connect Woolworths CFDC project. With over 280 metres of barrier, 230 metres of handrail, 34 door frame bollards, and plenty of bollards throughout the site, this was no small order. We worked alongside client Primary Connect and construction team Watts & Hughes to deliver a mix of off-the-shelf and modified safety products, each tailored to the unique layout and activity zones of the site. From protecting charging stations with bollards, to shielding expensive door mechanisms with our door frame bollards, creating safer pedestrian zones with mesh panels, and even supplying custom pre-assembled handrail for dock stairs, we covered it all. Every area presented its own challenges — from busy pedestrian zones to high-traffic loading bays — but our modular systems made it easy to adapt. Close collaboration with the site team ensured every product not only fit the space but performed exactly as needed once operations were underway. Anywhere safety was paramount, we had a solution to suit. With over six months from start to finish, this all-new site was a major project that showcased the full scope of what Tru-Gard does best: making workplaces safer. If you'd like to find out more about how we can do the same for your facility contact our team for a bespoke safety solution to suit.
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A Recipe for Safety at Mauri Flour Mill
Flour might seem light, fluffy, and admittedly a little bit messy, but when you go from the kitchen to transporting it around in bulk, it’s heavy, dusty, and combustible stuff. With stock moving around constantly at this busy flour mill, there are plenty of health and safety hazards. On-site personnel, visiting delivery drivers, forklifts carrying bulk pallets, obscured views, and noise make it a recipe for disaster, if you will. Our solution? Adding a few heaped servings of our Tru-Gard Barrier into the mix. With different configurations for different zones, we wanted to ensure we had the right safety solution for each area. From 910-2 for vehicle-only zones, to 910-2 + Hand Rail for pedestrian areas, and a super solid 910-3E with Personnel Gates for customised Driver Protection Zones. A lot of customers have been looking into driver protection options for their sites lately. From custom configurations like this one to our new Driver Protection Zone Kits, each option is designed to ensure visiting drivers have somewhere safe and secure to be while their trucks are loaded, and no one on site is unsure where they should be waiting or where the designated safety areas are. We know drivers like to make the most of a stop, getting out to stretch their legs, get some fresh air, and take a break, but making sure they can do so safely is a high priority for us. We’ve designed different configurations to suit different sites and can offer everything from a simple handrail area to a fully enclosed mesh cube, depending on the hazards on your site. After all, it takes a team to keep everyone safe. So, to wrap up, we took a couple of scoops of barriers, a pinch of accessories, and a dash of safety know-how and voilà, a piece of cake safety solution that works. If you think your on site health and safety recipe could do with a few more ingredients, get in touch with our team today to find out more.
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Safety Starts at Home: Protecting Our Own the Tru-Gard Way
At Tru-Gard, safety isn’t just something we supply – it’s something we live. Aka “Living Yellow” as it’s known around the office. Here in our Dunedin warehouse, we use the very same products we deliver to sites across New Zealand and Australia to keep our own team and assets protected. With forklifts, people, and products constantly on the move, we understand first-hand how these can create a hazardous mix. That’s why our warehouse is a showcase of our safety solutions in action, from pallet racking protection and handrail walkways to personnel gates, bollards, and even pallet stops to keep skips securely in place during adverse weather. We’ve considered each workstation, hazard, and product we have to find the best solution for our team. Our pallet racks are protected by pallet stops to keep products (and rubbish bins) in place, along with a combination of end-of-bay rack kits and upright protectors to guard against accidental forklift damage. Our walkways feature personnel gates and handrails, and we even have bollards in place for robot welding protection. “We help protect workplaces around New Zealand and Australia every day, so we know how hazardous a site can be, which is why we prioritised making sure our people and our assets are protected first. From pallet racking to handrail walkways and personnel gates to bollards, our site isn’t designed to meet safety requirements; it’s there to exceed them.”— Mark Taylor, Managing Director By putting our own products to the test every day, we’re proving that safety really does start at home and showing our customers exactly what the Tru-Gard Difference looks like. If you’d like to know more about turning your site safety from zero to hero, contact our team today.
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A Ewe-Nique Safety Solution for Silver Fern Farms Pareora PT.2
We are back at Silver Fern Farms Pareora to complete phase two of a large safety project at their busy meat processing factory. This time the focus was on strengthening pedestrian zones for shift workers who have to move through heavy traffic areas to reach their workstations. To overcome this hazard, we added extra 910-2 Safety Barriers to complete the walkways, as well as incoming and outgoing personnel gates and telescopic gates to separate pedestrians from vehicles. With over 600 employees split across multiple shifts, that’s plenty of pedestrians moving around the site at all hours of the day and night. Combined with the large stock trucks, containers, forklifts, bins, crates, pallets, livestock, and all of the other hazards we had already identified, this is just another layer of added protection to bring this over-120-year-old processing plant up to modern safety standards. Read part one of this Silver Fern Farms Pareora Safety Success Story, here.
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A Ewe-Nique Safety Solution for Silver Fern Farms Pareora PT.1
Silver Fern Farms in Pareora is a large sheep processing factory employing approximately 600 staff. Needless to say, that’s a lot of pedestrians moving around the site all day, every day! And they’re not the only things moving on site: large stock trucks, shipping containers, forklifts, storage bins, crates, pallets, and livestock are continuously on the move. This means the potential for an accident is always looming. The site is also more than 120 years old and wasn’t designed with the abundance of health and safety measures seen in modern processing plants. However, that was no barrier for the Silver Fern Farms team (no pun intended). With high standards of H&S company-wide, and significant effort and investment, they were prepared to bring the site up to new standards. Part of this involved addressing the many daily risks to workers, including heavy traffic, high-frequency pedestrian areas, and other hazards. That’s where we come in. Working with their team, we created a solution with safer pathways for foot traffic, protection from blind spots, and reduced chances of accidental damage. With a quick turnaround of just one week, our 910-2 Barrier + Hand Rail with a combination of Telescopic and Personnel Gates, was ready to go. The Pareora plant workers now have dedicated, highly visible, and most importantly, safer pathways that take them from A to B across the site. Read the second installment of our Silver Fern Farms Safety Success Story here.
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Zero Is Possible: Supporting Martin Brower’s Safety Mission
When on-site safety is a non-negotiable, we are all in. That’s why it was a privilege to support Martin Brower New Zealand during the construction of their new Auckland distribution centre – purpose-built to service McDonald’s restaurants across the country. As a global supply chain partner for multi-unit restaurants, managing the efficient movement of food products from suppliers to eateries all over the world, there are plenty of moving parts. One of the pillars of Martin Brower is safety – protecting employees, customers, and facilities. With a company-wide safety motto, “Zero is possible” – we couldn’t agree more. You might even say we’re lovin’ it! End-to-End Safety for a High-Performance Distribution Centre With a mindset that even one injury is unacceptable, Martin Brower brought that same commitment to safety into the planning and design of their Wiri facility. We were proud to partner with them to advise, estimate, and supply a suite of Tru-Gard safety products tailored to their new-build project. Installed before the first team member set foot on site (or the first burger bun rolled through the door), our safety systems were integrated right from the start, helping set the tone for a safer operation from day one. Solutions Supplied For this project, we delivered a full site-wide package of safety infrastructure, including: Safety Barriers Hand Rail Personnel Gates Door Frame Bollards Column Protectors Wheel Guides Zero Injuries Is Possible and Achievable At Tru-Gard, we believe in safer workplaces, and we’re proud to support others who share the same goal. If you’d like to know more about how we can support your safety goals, whether you’re building from the ground up or upgrading an existing site, contact our team today.
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