Provender Nurseries encompasses biosecurity

BALI Registered Affiliate member Provender Nurseries prides itself on having stringent procedures in place for managing incoming stock and plant health. To reflect this, they are changing their Nursery Managers' role to encompass biosecurity procedures which are now in place and enforceable across the industry. 

Stuart Tickner has been the Nursery Manager at Provender Nurseries for six years and has seen the job role change enormously in that time due to change in biosecurity procedures, associated paperwork and managing Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) inspections on site. There is a lot of hard work involved in keeping Provender Nurseries compliant with APHA guidelines, as Stuart manages the biosecurity both onsite and at all of the developing newly acquired offsite growing facilities that require paperwork for plant procurement and traceability.  

Working closely with the APHA and other advisory bodies, biosecurity used to take up a few hours per week 3 years ago, and now takes up a few hours of Stuart's time on a daily basis. 

Whenever Provender Nurseries purchase plants that are on the EU Tree Notification list the APHA are notified via their eDomero online portal. Stuart then accompanies the APHA representative on-site once the notifiable plants arrive. Plants that are on the EU Tree Notification list can be inspected in the nursery or in their final planting destination in customer's gardens. 

Stuart has also devised a questionnaire for biosecurity issues that was sent out to all of Provender Nurseries' suppliers in Europe back in 2017. Suppliers that did not meet the requirements set out in the questionnaire for applicable plant lines resulted in Provender Nurseries sourcing those lines elsewhere with suppliers that were complying. 

Staff at Provender Nurseries are kept up to date with all aspects of biosecurity with folders in each office that prove invaluable to the sales team when quoting and also by giving on-site training in conjunction with APHA once a year for all staff. 

Richard McKenna states:

Having Stuart in our team and his knowledge of biosecurity gives Provender Nurseries confidence in our buying responsibly and being able to offer our customers clean, inspected stock. With Brexit ahead of us and the as yet undecided changes in legislation that may arise we anticipate more challenges in terms of the amount of paperwork and amount of inspections, we may face as a result.  With Stuart aboard and training more of our nursery staff to handle APHA inspections and paperwork tracing, we have faith that we can continue to provide plants for our customers in a responsible manner.

Stuart's job title has been changed to Nursery Production & Biosecurity Manager to reflect his work towards biosecurity at Provender Nurseries and the newly acquired production sites.