As we move towards Christmas it is that time of year that we reflect on the year that has been and the new year that is heading towards us. It has been a great year for Focus! Moving into our new offices, taking on new management staff to free up Barbara & Craig and almost there with our Coda software.

We would like to thank all our amazing staff and clients! Without you Focus would not exist as it does. We wish you all a very merry Christmas and even better New Year! Enjoy your Christmas break and safe travels if you are travelling away.

Merry Christmas, Barbara & Craig

We are excited to have Erina join our leadership team in the role of Assistant Manager/Pastoral Care. Erina now works alongside Lim, our Logistics Manager, managing the day to day needs of the business. Whilst Lim takes care of HR and logistics, Erina looks after everything to do with our RSE staff and the houses we manage. Welcome aboard Erina! Some other great news to share is that Lim completed his diploma in AgriBusiness through ITO. Well done Lim!

What an exciting last few months it has been for us and our team!

52 of our staff had an amazing day in the snow, which ended with us visiting Lake Rotoiti to feed the eels. It really was a wonderful day.

Craig and 22 of our staff went along to the All Blacks game in Nelson, what a treat! We all felt privileged to be at an All Blacks game.

Craig has recently come back from Vanuatu. He was over there recruiting staff for our summer team. We’re excited to say, that we have recruited 28 people! Highlights of the trip for Craig was eating their traditional Vanuatu food and fishing. Spectacular weather too!

Check out the photos!!

We are so excited we have been 10 years in business that we will definitely be celebrating such a huge milestone!! But, not only that, we have finally moved into our own offices!! Yes, double exciting!! Still in the setup phase, so no pictures yet sorry. Once all the signage is up, we will be posting both here and on Facebook.

Another exciting bit of news is that we are in the final stages of 'phase one' of our software program for our industry (Coda). Phase one is the software being used by us (and maybe one other company) and moving onto phase two where it will be available for others. Watch this space!!

A huge thank you to both our wonderful staff and clients for continuing to work with us!!

As a bid to be eco-friendly and gain efficiency when our supervisors are moving around the vineyards, we are currently trialing an electric bike. The supervisors are loving the bike, so it looks like we might be off to the bike store to buy more! We will give it another month or so, but our hope is that all supervisors will be using an electric bike. If you are unsure on what an electric bike is, you may have heard them being called e-bike, power bike or booster bike.

An electric bike it just a bike with an integrated electric motor that can be used for propulsion. E-bikes can have a small motor to assist the rider’s pedal-power to more powerful e-bikes which tend to be closer to a scooter style functionality; however, all retain the ability to be pedaled by the rider and are, therefore, not electric motorcycles. If you have never ridden one, we highly recommend popping down to a bike store and giving one a whirl as they are so much fun!

We are looking at an early harvest this year and right now we are feeling very positive about it. Our prediction is that it could start as early as late February, the fruit will be good and there will be a smaller crop than we have previously experienced. We believe, for us, that it will be one of our best years all round! You really can't lose out with so much sunshine and we certainly have had a lot of that. Do you remember last year? A lack of sunshine and high rainfall, had everyone on edge.

To add to the good news, we are continuing to expand, which means we will now be moving to an office within the central town area. So, watch this space for our next blog!!

We are really excited to have finally finished the renovations on one of our rental properties that our overseas staff live in whilst working/living here in NZ. It really is important to us that our staff have a clean, safe and healthy home to live in and these renovations certainly go beyond that. Thanks to our wonderful trades people and especially Travis from Travis Taylor Builders Ltd. With the kitchen renovations it really has opened up (literally) the kitchen to one big open plan area. Great job - we are really happy with the results!!

Before Photos - Kitchen

After Photos - Kitchen & Bathroom

We are over half way through the pruning season and a million vines have already been done thanks to the Focus team. There is still a shortage of labour in Marlborough, however, we are doing the best we can and are expecting the pruning to be finished early October.

Focus has celebrated this month by supporting the Wine Marlborough 2017 Silver Secateurs Pruning Competition. Despite the weather we all had a great day and our Focus team came away winning the Championship Teams event!!

Congratulations to James Collin, Ryan Kaitip and Martin Malessas - it was a great effort and we are proud of you all!

Despite all of the issues the Marlborough region faced with harvest, Wine Marlborough only reported a decrease of 9%. Insert from their Vintage report: Marlborough harvested 302,396 tonnes of grapes this year, which was 79% of the national crop, according to the New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Vintage Survey 2017. NZW Chief Executive Philip Gregan says the national harvest total of 396,000 tonnes was down 9% on last year, promising more “muted” export volume growth in the year ahead.

The issues started with the November earthquakes, then we were faced with a cool/windy summer, and to top it off, too much rain in Autumn. Despite all of this, Marlborough was able to minimise the impact. Wine Marlborough report that this is mainly due to careful planning and management of vineyards, and good harvest decisions.

What we don’t know yet, is what the flavours will be like. We certainly know, that we can’t wait for the wine to hit the market in the coming months!

To check out the full report, click here.

We are really excited to be one of the first businesses to not only be using Cohelix, but to work with Cohelix by using their system and providing feedback and recommendations. Cohelix (check out www.cohelix.co.nz) is a cloud based employment documentation platform to help businesses manage their employment contracts, from creating to signing. The idea is that you create a contract for a new staff member based on your templates, where they are emailed an electronic copy they can sign online. The benefits to using Cohelix are:

It will simplify and speed up the processEverything is stored online, in one locationEnsures you are compliantHelps you go paperless

We are always looking at how we can streamline our business to ensure we are striving for continuous improvement and efficiency, and we believe that Cohelix are on the right track. We also love being able to help out another business from their early days, where we can provide valuable feedback to help them improve their product.

On the 8th February 2017, we had three new ladies start with us all the way from Tokoroa (30km southwest of Rotorua). They come to us through the NZ seasonal work scheme, which we are a part of. This scheme is run by the Ministry of Social Development where they look for people around New Zealand that are in need of a job and can move to a different location within New Zealand. The idea is that people are better off in work; work builds financial security, confidence and independence. And also, getting them out of their current environment and into a new one, can help them stay focussed when starting a new job. MSD are committed to getting more people into work and helping them stay in work.

With the scheme they get a four-month fixed term contract, however, if everything goes well, we may offer them full-time employment. During the fixed term contract, we provide them with accommodation in one of our properties, making it nice and easy for them.

We are excited to say crops are looking good and so are bunch numbers!! We certainly are gearing up for a big harvest, and in fact last year we increased our staff by 20% and for harvest this year we will increase by another 30%. Our expectation is that tonnage will double compared to last year! So…probably ‘excited’ is an understatement!! Let’s just hope there are no issues with disease and the weather plays its part.

Another thing we are excited about, is that there has been a shift in our staff numbers where well over half of our staff are now New Zealanders on average across the year. It used to be the other way around.

So what does this all mean? The roll on affect is not only good for us, but our staff, our clients and the Marlborough region and actually New Zealand wine in general. Did you know Marlborough produces just over 70% of New Zealand’s wine; and they are predicting the ‘wine industry’ will expand by 30% in the next 5 years.

What about the effect of the quakes? A NZ Winegrowers survey showed Marlborough lost around 2% of its wine and had damage to around 20% of its tanks. Due to the prediction of a large 2017 crop, capacity is now the most important issue for many wineries that lost their tanks. It certainly has been a challenging time for the Marlborough wineries and will continue to be for some time, as due to large insurance excesses some wineries are faced to ‘paying’ for all of their losses/damages opposed to making a claim.

If you want to keep updated with the latest that is happening in the Marlborough Wine industry check out the latest Winepress: http://www.wine-marlborough.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Winepress-December-2016.pdf

Wow...what a year it has been! Definitely a positive year of growth for us, our industry and many other businesses in Marlborough. This week our team are celebrating our positive growth along with Christmas, by having a staff party and decorating a tree out in a vineyard. It is our annual tradition and loved by all staff.

We believe at this time of year it is good opportunity to reflect on highlights throughout the year and plan for a another positive year ahead. Highlights include:

- Awesome trip to Vanuatu where Craig and Barbara were totally immersed in their culture

- Great results at the Silver Secateurs with heaps of wins

- Finished developing and testing our software prototype and now moving to having it properly developed by a 3rd party

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our wonderful clients for continuing to work with us!! We would also like to thank our awesome staff for all their hard work!!

Merry Christmas to all and we look forward to seeing you all in 2017.

Another winter has been and gone, so summer here we come! We certainly are excited as the weather warms up and in particular we have been asked by an existing customer to expand our operation. Yes, expand, and that expansion includes adding an additional 300ha of vineyards to look after.

This led Barbara and Craig to recently spend a week in Vanuatu to review and develop better recruiting systems, develop more contacts and spend some time with the people and families that have worked with Focus. Barbara and Craig got to see firsthand the positive effects on the families. They felt such an overwhelming respect from the Vanuatuan community as the money they earn from Focus has a huge impact on the entire community.

They had an amazing week, with some inspiring people and managed to enjoy the beauty of Vanuatu, even though it rained for most of the time!!

Our expansion plan now is to gradually increase our RSE and New Zealand workforce over the next year and we are super excited to see what new opportunities and challenges it may bring us; and we are prepared!

Once again the team from Focus Labour Solutions pulled out all the stops and managed to walk away with several of the major awards from the day! It was a fantastic event, which was well supported by all the Focus staff. We felt extremely proud that Focus had such a great presence at this auspicious event.

Here are some of the highlights:

Ian Jimmy from Focus won Champion PrunerBarry Hava from Focus won Novice PrunerAle Seaua from Focus won the Champion Cutter competitionJames Collin From Focus placed third for the Champion Cutter competitionBarry Hava from Focus won the John Bibby Memorial Trophy for the best of the best!

All the winners received around $500 in cash and prizes, and one of the Focus team also won one of the major spot prizes, which was an oil skin jacket, kindly donated by Lawson Dry Hills.

Marlborough really turned the weather on for us, with an absolutely cracker day, and the hungry crowd managed to chew their way through over 500 sausages - all of which were donated by Focus (guess the boys must have needed to keep up their strength for all that hard work).

Once again, we just want to say a huge congratulations to all the guys who earned themselves awards on the day, and to all the friends, family and co-workers who came along to show their support. The atmosphere was awesome and it wouldn't have been the same without you all there!

Bring on next year!!

It's that time of year again, time to celebrate the best pruners in our industry!

This years annual Silver Secateurs Competition will be held on Sunday the 14th of August from 9am at Yealands Estate Vineyard, Rowley Crescent (off SH1), Blenheim.

This competition has been created to encourage a high standard and to recognise the skills of pruners in the viticulture industry.The industry recognises that grapevine pruning is an integral management practice required for quality wines and we want to show the boys (and girls) out there in the field that we appreciate their skill and hard work!

Focus encourages all staff to enter and covers the cost of entry. In previous years we have had around 20 staff that participate – they love it. No one works on that day and the rest of the staff attend as supporters/cheerleaders. Craig is on the committee and has been for around four years. Focus loves it as it is the only event that recognises the skills of the people (generally around 4,500 people working in Marlborough) that work hard for only four months of the year. The event encourages technique and quality over speed. The event invites everyone from novices to extremely experienced and there are lots of spot prizes to give away. Focus is also the sponsor of the Championship Female Pruner Trophy.

It’s a great day out for the whole family with a BBQ, coffee cart, Mr Whippy and Bouncy Castle on site! The prize-giving will take place at 6pm Giesen Sports Centre, Renwick. We would love to see you there to help celebrate this fantastic event!

We would like to congratulate three of our staff who came down from Whanganui just over four months ago.

Trent Tweedie-Douche, Dillon Parker-Cairncross and Ricky Hausman.

These three young men were unemployed and came to us through a recruitment program we run in collaboration with WINZ, with the aim of getting New Zealanders back into the work force.

Trent, Dillon and Ricky have successfully completed a four month fixed term contract with us and have proven to be a great asset to our company.

We congratulate them all for moving to a different town, coming into a new job in an industry they knew nothing about and committing to the required minimum four month period.

Focus is very proud to announce that all three have decided to stay on with Focus and have renewed their contracts with us.

We will continue to work with WINZ and the Skills for Industry programme to develop industry specific, on-the-job experience for young New Zealanders - and look forward to creating many more employment opportunities for Kiwis in the future.

We are proud to announce that we are the Westpac Marlborough Chamber of Commerce Business Awards Supreme Winner for 2015! Winning three categories which included:

WINNER Westpac Supreme AwardWINNER Wallace Diack Chartered Accountants Titan Business AwardWINNER Southern Water Engineering Investing in People & Skills Award:

We'd like to sincerely thank all our staff, clients and supporting organisations for their support in helping us achieve this fantastic result. We couldn't be more happy!

RowMaster is a revolutionary new system designed to take the hassle out of vineyard contract payroll; and if you have ever been involved in this process, you will understand the need for such a program. In fact, we are designing it so it is not just suitable to vineyards, but any business involved in piece-meal rates or combination of piece-meal and hourly rates i.e. fruit picking etc.

For the past two years, a specialised team at Focus has been working on the research and development of a new cloud based system, which will allow our supervisors to enter hourly rates and piece rate data live whilst in the field. This data is collated and reported in a way that is quickly and easily verified and entered into payroll programs - reducing manual collection of this information by between 60%-75%.

Initial trialing has proven extremely successful and we are currently in the process of fine tuning so we can go 100% live with it. From there we will then be working on linking RowMaster with popular cloud based payroll programs for further productivity gains. We are truly excited about this...especially our office staff!

Our next step will be to brand and launch RowMaster, taking it to market and making it available to anyone who wishes to increase productivity and take the stress out of weekly payroll hassle. Watch this space!

In 2008 Barbara and Craig founded Focus Labour Solutions to meet the demands of high quality and honest labour hire services for the viticultural industry.

We have based our business on values that ensure we are always striving to be the best for our clients and employees. We ensure we never compromise on our standards, service or systems. When we make a commitment to a client, we stick to it.

Currently we employ 16 permanent staff and can employ anywhere up to 120 casual staff at any one time. With this, our clients can count on us to solve their short term or even long term labour hire requirements. We have developed our own internal and external training programs to ensure that all staff are well trained. We are also a member of the Master Contractors Association and 100% support their commitment to compliance and best practice.

Our values:

Fairness - A commitment to being an honest and fair employer to all our employees.Quality - To provide quality work and well-trained labour staff, and ensure each team is supervised at all times. To expand with demand, maintaining quality of service at all times.Safety - To provide our staff with a safe working environment and supply all necessary safety equipment.Honesty - To maintain relationships based on honesty and integrity between client, contractor and employees.Integrity - To ensure all work commitments are met within agreed timeframes.Compliant - To adhere to all requirements and regulations - OSH, Immigration, Department of Labour, and Employment Relations.

At Focus Labour Solutions this is what we are all about:

Values Diversity and employs great people with great attitudes.We take great care in our work and do what it takes to get the job done.We look after our customers and value their feedback both good and bad and put things right when required.We act professionally at all times and treat each other with honesty and respect.The health and safety of our employees is paramount.We are a family type business that takes great pride in what we do and where everyone contributes to the team.