For Fletcher International Exports logistics officer Matt Lynch, nothing prepared him when he discovered the scale of production and sequence of processes to get products to international markets before, he first started working there nine months ago.

“It’s a bit left field for me to have applied for work at Fletchers but then given a willingness to learn and take in something new has been great, and when you see the production and learn how products get from point A to Z, it is very cool and I was surprised by the vastness of the company and the vastness of the production,” Matt told Dubbo Photo News.

After almost a decade working in IT in sales and repairs, Matt decided he was ready for a change and got to thinking about how Fletchers was an ever-growing business that had been in Dubbo for over 20 years, and he’d like to find out more.

“I thought I’d love to see the inner workings of Fletchers and what it actually does and as I’ve found out, you could not fathom the degree of it you until you’re actually here, it’s incredible.”

Initially, he applied for a documentation clerk job, but the company offered a logistics position instead however he first wanted to get a perspective on how it all ran, then work his way up from there.

“I started in the frozen load-out though I wasn’t there for long, but it was good. Obviously, I was someone new to the business, and my supervisor Joe really helped me to get a grip on a lot of things, which I had no idea about, and after that I went to chill load-out before starting in the export office.

“Working in production let me see what is produced, how it’s produced, and how that whole system is managed, which is key to understanding logistics because if you’re producing one product that needs to be shipped on a particular day, you need to know when it’s produced, when it’s going to be ready, and then have it tee-d up for a container to be loaded, and set sail; it takes a lot of coordinating,” he said.

Having no prior experience has never been a problem for Matt either, and while he admits he’s on a high learning curve he’s surrounded by a team of experienced people who are ready and willing to guide and help him as he needs.

“I’m learning on the job and my background in IT has definitely helped in terms of picking things up along the way, but now I’m starting to see a lot more of an improvement there, and as things tend to happen every two or three weeks, those reoccurrences help me understand what needs to be done, and there’s a lot of data entry as well, so you get used to that.

“I also sit across from the main logistics person, Chris, who’s been working here for years, an absolute whiz when it comes to this stuff, then a couple of people sit beside me who’ve gone from logistics into sales, but have a great idea about logistics, so if a problem occurs, they can help handle situations, and I’ve never been made to feel like I don’t know what to do or who to go to.”

A good day on the job is when everything runs smoothly but as he’s dealing with over 95 countries of course there are challenges.

“Obviously, things aren’t always going to go 100 per cent smoothly, but regardless of what can happen it’s just about overcoming that and making sure everything goes as well as it can.”

On reflection, Matt looks back to his school days at St Johns College where he says he let his studies slide for no particular reason and started playing computer games to pass time but didn’t have any keenness to get a career out of that either.

It was only after school that he learned about IT and took some courses, then worked in IT sales and repair yet despite loving the field decided in the past year, it was time for a change.

“I’d say to anyone in the same situation or maybe at a crossroads, just give it a shot because you don’t know where you could end up at Fletchers or where a role here might take you because I was thinking IT was the one path for me, but then given a chance, I’m able to learn a bunch of different kinds of things, which is leading down another path, and there’s 10 different paths that could go from there, so there’s a lot of opportunity here,” he said.