Food & Beverage
From bakeries and meat processors to cold storage facilities and health food manufacturers, HBG supplies the production workers, machine operators, and food safety professionals that keep your facility compliant and productive around the clock.
Our Approach
Food and beverage manufacturing demands more than warm bodies on a line. Every worker must understand food safety protocols, hygiene standards, and the compliance requirements that keep your facility audit-ready.
Every worker deployed to your facility holds current food safety certifications and understands HACCP critical control points, temperature monitoring, and personal hygiene standards. We verify credentials before deployment — not after.
From chilled warehouses at 2°C to blast freezers at -25°C, we supply workers experienced in cold chain operations. Our candidates understand cold storage PPE requirements, rotation schedules, and the physical demands of sustained work in sub-zero conditions.
Food production runs around the clock. We staff day shifts, night shifts, rotating rosters, and weekend operations with workers who are specifically available for non-standard hours — so you never scramble for fill-ins when a shift needs cover.
Beyond standard pre-employment checks, we screen for food-industry-specific requirements: food handler certificates, allergen awareness training, manual handling competencies, and medical clearances for food contact roles. Workers arrive audit-ready from day one.
Roles We Fill
Casual, contract, temp-to-perm, and permanent placements across food and beverage manufacturing.
Sectors We Cover
Boning rooms, slaughter floors, smallgoods, and poultry processing — workers with knife skills training, cold chain experience, and export-facility compliance.
Production bakers, dough handlers, confectionery line operators, and packaging staff for large-scale bakery and snack food operations. Clients include Cookie Time and similar manufacturers.
Milk processing, juice production, brewery operations, and bottling lines — operators experienced with pasteurisation, filling equipment, and clean-in-place (CIP) systems.
Nutraceutical, supplement, and health food manufacturing under TGA and GMP requirements. Workers experienced in controlled production environments, including clients like GD Wellness.
A Day in the Life
A production manager at a confectionery facility calls HBGat 3:00pm on a Wednesday. Two packers on the night shift have called in sick, and the Christmas production run cannot afford downtime on the packaging line. Our recruitment coordinator confirms two experienced food production workers within the hour. Both hold current food handler certificates, have completed the facility’s site-specific induction previously, and understand allergen changeover procedures for lines running both nut-containing and nut-free products.
The workers arrive at 9:30pm, pass through the hygiene checkpoint — hand washing, hair nets, beard snoods, clean smocks — and are briefed by the shift supervisor on the evening’s production schedule. One is assigned to the wrapping line, monitoring seal integrity and pack weights against specification. The other works on the end-of-line carton erector and case packer, ensuring correct product counts and legible batch coding on every carton before palletisation. Both complete cleaning-in-place procedures at the end of their shift and hand over to the morning crew.
For larger engagements, the process scales. When a health food manufacturer like GD Wellness needs 15 additional process workers for a supplement production ramp-up, HBG coordinates group inductions, verifies TGA-compliant manufacturing awareness, and stages start dates across the first week to ensure production supervisors are not overwhelmed onboarding everyone simultaneously.
Market Context
Australia’s food and beverage manufacturing sector is the country’s largest manufacturing subsector by employment, yet it faces chronic workforce challenges. Seasonal demand swings, high turnover in entry-level production roles, and increasingly stringent food safety regulations mean that finding workers who are both available and compliant is harder than it appears. A worker who is merely willing to show up is not the same as one who understands HACCP principles, allergen segregation, and the temperature discipline required in cold chain operations.
HBG has built its food and beverage recruitment capability around these industry-specific realities. We screen candidates not just on availability and physical fitness, but on their understanding of food safety fundamentals, their experience with production line equipment, and their ability to work productively in temperature-controlled environments. For export-registered facilities operating under Department of Agriculture approved arrangements, we ensure workers meet the additional compliance requirements that apply to export-grade production.
The regulatory environment continues to tighten. Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) requirements, state-based food safety legislation, and client-driven audit programs such as SQF, BRC, and FSSC 22000 all place demands on the workforce that go beyond basic labour hire. HBG maintains a dedicated pool of candidates with these specific competencies, reducing the compliance risk that comes with deploying untrained workers into food-grade environments.
National Coverage
HBGprovides food and beverage manufacturing labour hire and permanent recruitment across Australia’s key food production regions. In New South Wales, we service facilities across Western Sydney, the Central Coast, the Hunter Valley, and the Illawarra. In Queensland, our coverage includes Brisbane’s southern industrial precincts, the Gold Coast food precinct, Ipswich, and regional processing centres.
Victoria’s food manufacturing heartland — from the south-east corridor through Dandenong to the western suburbs around Laverton and Truganina — is a core market for our team. We also service food production clients in Western Australia, South Australia’s Barossa and Adelaide Plains regions, and Tasmania’s growing seafood and dairy processing sector. With over 860+ active clients nationally and a database of 128,000+ candidates, we have the reach and candidate depth to service food manufacturing operations wherever they are located.
Compliance & Licensing
HBG holds active labour hire licences in NSW (SLJ: 02939), QLD (LHL-05861-F7S5Z), VIC (VICLHL07487), WA (EA3008), and ACT (ACTLHL00000654). Our compliance team ensures all licensing obligations are met, including regular audits, payroll tax compliance, superannuation guarantee payments, and adherence to the applicable modern award — typically the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Manufacturing Award or the Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award depending on the operation.
All food and beverage workers deployed through HBGare covered by our workers’ compensation insurance in every operating jurisdiction. We carry $20 million public liability insurance and provide certificates of currency to all clients. For food manufacturing clients, we verify that workers hold current food safety certificates, have completed allergen awareness training, and where required, have undergone medical assessments for food handling roles. Documentation is maintained on file and available for client audits at short notice.
FAQ
Whether you need one machine operator or an entire shift crew for a seasonal ramp-up, HBG delivers food-safety-compliant staff fast. Call us now or send your requirements — same-day response guaranteed.
Licensed labour hire provider — NSW, QLD, VIC, WA & ACT.