In May, AUSVEG Victoria organised two information sessions to introduce LEAN and Continuous Improvement to growers promoting the value of these methodologies through the VegNET 3.0 project, Lean Principles to Improve Profitability (MT22011), funded under the Innovation Fund.

Victorian vegetable farmers face a range of similar issues across the industry regardless of their location. Red tape, compliance, narrowing margins, labour supply and skill levels. This is compounded by weather that dictates so much of crop performance. As a result, farmers are looking to fine tune their business to eliminate inefficiencies and boost profitability within their business.

Chris Schreurs and Marie-Astrid Ottenhof from Schreurs & Sons attended the session held on the Mornington Peninsula. Bruce Yelland and Josh Kyne from Moshie shared insights from over 20 years of experience in Lean principals and continuous improvement.

Schreurs & Sons decided to put Astrid Ottenhof and Lachie Schreurs through the extended 10 x 4-hour workshops in Lean. Astrid applied for and won a scholarship from Hort Innovation to continue learning and applying Lean Principles in the Schreurs & Sons business. Hort Innovation has fully funded six applicants from vegetable farms for several years to complete the training with Moshie and upskill their business. The scholarships are valued at $4,000 + GST.

Only one scholarship is available per business, though additional participants can be enrolled at their own expense. It is uncertain if these scholarships will be offered next year.

Lachie Schreurs has now completed the first of the 10 sessions and is loving it. As he put it, “I walked out the first session, called my dad, and said ‘This will change our whole business’.”

Giovanni Todaro is the farm manager at Mason Bros farm and attended the Werribee information session. He found the presentation by Bruce from Moshie to be very compelling and said that he would recommend it to anybody. Mason Bros has enrolled Vincent Mason and was also a successful applicant for a scholarship. Vincent will be attending the program online while Lachie and Astrid will be attending in person.

The 20-week program includes each participant completing a business project or case study where they have applied Lean Principles to bring a real change to their business. The participant’s project is based on an area of need within the business. This guarantees that the learnings gained from the program are applied within the business and not left as a meaningless information session.

At the recent graduation ceremony for the previous cohort, it was clear just how much each participant had benefited. Graduates came from a diverse range of horticulture businesses – from tiny tree farms all the way up to large scale nurseries. Each participant was eager to show how they had applied their learnings to their businesses from significant financial upsides to completely restructuring company processes to streamline productivity amidst transitionary periods in their company.

“Josh and I feel incredibly privileged to work with groups of leaders within horticulture and support them to achieve incredible change in their businesses,” said Bruce Yelland. “At today’s Lean Leaders graduation, we have a group of 10 people who have identified and started to realise well over $1m+ combined in potential savings for their businesses by applying concepts and strategies of the Lean Leaders program.

“Plus, they have more engaged teams, plus they’re building strong workplace cultures, plus they have a better life work balance, plus they’re creating sustainable businesses that people want to work for.”

Moshie boasts of an ROI per participant of a minimum $40k across the program cohort.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE
10 x 4-hour workshops, delivered fortnightly

“We are incredibly grateful to Hort Innovation for providing scholarships to vegetable levy paying businesses to access the Moshie Lean Leaders Program, and we look forward to supporting the current round of vegetable growers through the current programs and the outcomes that they can achieve,” said Bruce.

Graduation for the new cohort will be 13 November 2025.

FIND OUT MORE
Please contact Daniel Bosveld from AUSVEG Victoria on 0459 519 433 or email rdo@ausvegvic.com.au