| 25 T T Hugh de Lacy Safety recognised with ACC award Family affair: Chance and Rochelle Campbell took over Hikurangi-based Northland Vegetation Control five years ago. Below Chance and brother Trale, who is also heavily involved in the management side of the native tree-planting. Northland Vegetation Control REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT When Chance and Rochelle Campbell took over Northland Vegetation Control five years ago, it was primarily a weed-spraying business, but lately it spends more time planting plants than poisoning them – and has won an ACC award for the way it goes about it. Hikurangi-based Northland Vegetation Control has a full-time staff of 12, most of them qualified in handling agricultural chemicals, but scales up with another ten seasonal workers during the winter planting season. The Campbells bought it on the death of Chance’s father Richard Campbell, who had bought it from its founder, Jeff Crawford, in 2012. Chance’s brother Trale is also heavily involved in the management side of the native tree-planting. Chance himself had worked for Jeff and the company as an 18-year-old, so was well versed with the spraying side of the company before he and Rochelle took it over, and three years ago they branched out into planting natives and poplars. With a planting season running from April to October, it was a natural diversification for a company whose weed control work is mostly in the warmer months. After working from a leased yard in Hikurangi the company recently bought a home yard 10 minutes west of Kamo. Its major clients for the planting work are the state-owned farming company Pamu, aka LandCorp, the Northland Regional Council and private contacts. The Pamu work takes Northland Vegetation Control all over the top of the North Island, and to stations down at Levin and Feilding, and up the East Coast from Wairoa to Gisborne. These away contracts have the staff living in the stations’ shearers’ quarters, which are otherwise used virtually only in the summer months nowadays. Last year the company planted no fewer than 19,000 poplar poles in the cyclone-ravaged hills of the East Coast, on top of a total of 18,000 around Northland and 160,000 natives there on the likes of fenced-off riverbanks and erosion areas. As would be expected from outdoor work in often steep and remote locations, the health and safety challenges to the company’s workforce are considerable but, led by Rochelle, it’s an area in which the company has excelled. Last year it won the Accident Compensation Corporation’s Northland Business Excellence Award for health and safety, which involves a comprehensive health check, based on the internationally recognised Baldridge Business Excellence Criteria, of the competing companies. Rochelle, who’s from a nursing background, implemented the health and safety processes and procedures that won the award, while Chance and his brother Trale provided oneon-one training for their workers, upskilling them on managing the risks around environmental, chemical, transport, planting equipment and machinery issues. “As some of our clients are large government-owned organisations, the importance of having good health and safety processes and procedures is paramount,” Rochelle says. “We take a holistic approach to our staff’s well-being that includes ensuring staff in remote areas have digital connectivity. “It’s something that’s important to our employees when they’re leaving their families behind for periods of time,” she says. Business Advisors & Chartered Accountants www.yhpj.co.nz (09) 470 0400 NOW OFFERING Commercial Property Management Services! YHPJ is proud to support Northland Vegetation Control and congratulations to Chance Campbell and the team in their 2023 ACC Workplace Safety Award
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