Gemma Ferguson, who manages site services at Greencroft Bottling, is celebrating an impressive 20 years with the company.
“It’s the people and job progression that have kept me here so long,” Gemma explains. “I’ve progressed through the business over the years and learned different things. It’s always interesting. But mainly the people. I’ve made great friends here.”
Gemma first joined Greencroft Bottling to work on the company’s second bottling line. Today there are nine lines across two buildings, filling up to 115,000 bottles, boxes and cans of wine every hour. “My first job was labelling whisky bottles. I had to put corks in, take bottles off, put them on pallets, then hand-label each one.”
From there, Gemma moved onto operating fillers before being promoted to team leader. “That involved compliance paperwork, controlling jobs, signing jobs off and getting involved in all the machines. Depal machines, fillers, blitzpack as we had back then for putting bottles into boxes. At that time we also had to do our own lab checks. We checked strength, torque, volume, turbidity and more. Greencroft Bottling now has two dedicated laboratories for checking all the wine we pack. I’ve certainly seen the company grow over my time.”
Gemma remained a line leader for many years before being promoted to shift supervisor around 2015. After maternity leave she moved to a day-shift role to better suit family life. Today she manages site services, looking after a team of nine and overseeing all cleaning as well as cardboard and plastic baling across Greencroft Bottling and Greencroft Two. Her role includes undertaking internal audits, managing holidays and absences for her team, working with contract cleaners, liaising with contactors, ordering all consumables across site, from soap and cleaning products to replacement parts for floor cleaning machines.
Why has she stayed for two decades?
“It’s the people and the opportunity to fulfil a variety of roles.”
If you would like to find out more about Greencroft Bottling and Lanchester Wines, visit their websites: www.greencroftbottling.com and www.lanchesterwines.co.uk
