Guiding career growth at Kaituna Sawmill

When engineering apprentice Kennedy Florence joined the team at Kaituna Sawmill, 30-year trades veteran, Mike Winter, was on hand to provide mentorship. They share their experiences and insights on the importance of supporting and guiding future generations.

Kennedy Florence joined OneFortyOne as an apprentice engineer at the beginning of 2022. It’s typically a four-year course but she’s confident it can be done in less. Initially considering a career in marine engineering, a conversation with a OneFortyOne representative at the ‘Future of Work’ conference introduced Kennedy to the apprenticeship pathway to engineering. “Within three months, I’d completely changed my mind and signed up for an engineering apprenticeship with OneFortyOne,” she says. Combining full-time work and study is challenging, and it’s a significant change from being at school, but Kennedy can study during work hours if necessary. There are many elements to keeping the sawmill running smoothly and preventative maintenance is a large part of Kennedy’s role. “I clean compressors, check hydraulic temperatures, do trimmer checks, vibration analysis, and check for variations that might appear before something breaks,” she explains. Mike adds, “Kennedy is doing a lot of the condition monitoring, including temperature readings on our main saw centres and logging and graphing the results. Her work has prevented at least two major outages.”

From Kennedy’s perspective, the team dynamic is excellent. “I’m the youngest member of the engineering team,” she says. “All of the guys are great at explaining things and we all help each other. It’s a pretty solid team.”

Mike Winter has been a tradie for his entire working life and involved in timber processing for the past 18 years. When OneFortyOne offered him the position of engineering manager at Kaituna Sawmill he leapt at the chance to relocate from Christchurch to Marlborough. “Being in the timber industry, I knew OneFortyOne was a great company to work with, so I took the opportunity to join the team and move closer to where my daughter lives,” he says. Throughout his career, Mike has benefited from a range of opportunities, so he’s keen to mentor others and give back to the industry. He supports the business in recruiting apprentices and sees the value of bringing more young people into trades and forestry. “The people coming through are the future – they are where we want to go,” he explains. Kennedy is one of Mike’s apprentices and when he talks about her achievements and progress his pride is apparent. “Kennedy has exceeded all my expectations as an apprentice. She’s one of the best I’ve worked with,” he says. “I’d like to see her career with OneFortyOne progress, and we’ll give her every opportunity to do what she wants.”

OneFortyOne is currently recruiting for an apprentice maintenance technician as well as a maintenance engineering team leader for the afternoon shift. To find out more see: onefortyone.com/working-withus/careers/job-opportunities/#kaituna