Labour Hire Campbellfield and Somerton

The industrial estates either side of the Hume Highway have been making things for longer than most of Melbourne's newer precincts have existed. Metal fabrication, plastics and rubber, component manufacturing, food and beverage processing and the transport depots that move all of it sit in a band running north from Fawkner through Coolaroo and Broadmeadows into the Somerton estate and Cooper Street at Epping. It is older, denser and far more varied than the greenfield warehouse corridors out west.

Manufacturing labour is judged on one thing, whether the line runs. A line short two people does not run at eighty percent, it runs at the speed of the slowest station. We supply machine operators, packaging hands, food production staff, licensed forklift operators and store personnel through this corridor, recruited for the shift they will work rather than rostered onto it afterwards.

Roles

What a production site actually asks for

Factory and process roles, supplied to the shift pattern the plant already runs.

Machine operators

Operators for injection moulding, extrusion, press and packaging machinery through the Campbellfield and Thomastown fabrication and plastics sites. Machine specific experience where the plant calls for it, general operating where it does not.

Food production hands

Process, packing and line hands for the food and beverage manufacturing sites through Somerton and Cooper Street. Gowning, hygiene induction and allergen awareness are screened before the placement, not on the morning.

Forklift operators

Licensed LF and LO holders for raw material handling, finished goods and truck loading. The licence class is matched to the machines on your floor before anyone is offered to you.

Warehouse and dispatch

Storepersons, pickers and dispatch hands for the on site stores and the transport depots along the Hume Highway. Most plants through here run their own store rather than handing it to a third party.

Production and packaging work inside a manufacturing plant in Melbourne's north

Coverage

Suburbs we cover from here

Not an exhaustive list. If your site is nearby and not named, ask.

Campbellfield

Somerton

Thomastown

Coolaroo

Broadmeadows

Epping

Fawkner

Craigieburn

Local demand

The work we see in this corridor

Food and beverage manufacturing through Somerton and Cooper Street, where gowning and a hygiene induction are not optional and a worker who has done neither slows the line on their first shift.
Plastics, rubber and metal fabrication through Campbellfield and Thomastown, much of it running two shifts and some of it running three.
Component and industrial suppliers who ramp against a customer order rather than a season, so the notice is short and the run length uncertain.
Transport and distribution depots along the Hume Highway, where the store and the yard need different people and both need to be there at shift start.
Older buildings with tighter access, narrower aisles and older plant, which changes what a competent operator looks like.
Automotive parts and trailer and body builders along the Hume Highway and Sydney Road, a legacy of the area’s car industry, where welding, fabrication and assembly work comes in project runs.
Packaging, printing and chemical blending operations through Thomastown and Broadmeadows, where batch work and changeovers decide how many hands a shift needs.

Bluestone Labour Group holds Victorian Labour Hire Licence VICLHL11535. In Victoria it is a legal requirement for a host employer to use a licensed labour hire provider, and the obligation sits with you as well as with us.

Engagement

How production labour should be engaged

Production work is casual employment rather than contracting. You set the roster, your supervisor directs the work, and it is performed on your plant to your cycle time. An ABN arrangement laid over that carries a sham contracting risk, and the exposure lands on the host as well as on the provider. We engage these workers as casual employees on the Bluestone payroll under the relevant Modern Award, so wages, PAYG, superannuation and WorkCover sit with us from the first shift.

Afternoon and night shift are the hard ones to fill anywhere in Melbourne, and this corridor runs more of them than most. Rostering day workers onto nights is where reliability breaks down, usually in week two. We recruit the pool for the shift, so the people on your night roster chose a night roster.

Consistency is worth more than speed here. A line that gets four new faces every Monday spends the morning inducting instead of producing, and that cost is paid by you. We keep a small pool attached to your site, brief them once, and roster the same people back.

One consolidated weekly invoice, timesheets approved by your supervisor, no sign up fee and no lock in contract.

More on how we work with host employers.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Yes, and we treat them as separate roles rather than an extension of the day shift. Tell us the start time, the finish time and whether the roster is fixed or rotating. Someone who suits a permanent night shift often does not suit a rotating one, and swapping the two is the fastest way to lose them in week two.

Right to work, work history on food or process lines, and whether the worker has actually done gowning and a hygiene induction before rather than just heard of them. Where the site handles allergens or runs a metal detection and foreign object regime, we brief on that before the shift. Your own site induction and any product specific training stay with you, because they have to.

You are, on your own plant, and most manufacturers want it that way. We verify the High Risk Work licence where one applies, such as LF or LO for forklifts, and we confirm the worker has run comparable machinery. Competency on your specific machine, its guarding and its isolation procedure has to be signed off on site, and we will not claim to have done it for you.

A fortnight if you want it running properly from day one. Two or three people at short notice is straightforward. A full second shift means recruiting for that shift rather than borrowing from the day pool, so a rough forecast early is worth more to us than a precise number late.

Yes. We supply workers across the northern industrial band, including Campbellfield, Somerton, Coolaroo, Broadmeadows, Thomastown, Epping and Fawkner. Tell us the site address and shift start time and we will put forward people who can reliably get there for that start.

Yes. We supply licensed forklift operators for warehouses, transport depots and manufacturing stores in the north. We check the High Risk Work Licence class, LF or LO, against the machine you run before the operator is booked. See forklift operator hire for more.

Other areas

We also cover

See all labour hire services

Guide: forklift licence classes explained, LF, LO and what your site needs.

Guide: staffing a production line with casual labour.

Labour Hire in Campbellfield and Somerton