Meet the Team - Jade Jurgens

Meet Jade Jurgens

Knife Trainer at ANZCO Foods Eltham

Jade is the Knife Trainer at ANZCO Foods Eltham. As part of his role he shows new employees around site and trains them how to use knives properly, conducts ongoing training for all employees, coordinates training records, and is the port of call for any questions about knives. He's a health and safety rep, and attends fortnightly and monthly meetings to help the health and safety team keep Eltham a safe place to work. He's also a union secretary and helps to keep the union informed. In the off-season, he helps to look after the migrant workers.

Jade started out fixing pallets on-site as a contractor, and then joined the team as a process worker. He's been with ANZCO for 22 years and hasn't worked anywhere else! He's been surprised at the opportunities - if you work hard, you'll get recognised and that helps to lead to career progression.

Outside of work Jade enjoys fishing and whitebaiting, but the main thing that takes up his spare time is gardening. Jade has a side business growing Asian vegetables, and he sells them to customers all over Taranaki. He grows the vegetables in greenhouses, which take up around 250 square metres, and all the gardening tasks - weeding, watering, planting - keeps him busy when he gets home from work. After a busy day you can often find Jade playing with his kids - his partner works at Eltham, and when she's on night shift he'll cook dinner and get the kids into bed.

Fun facts:

• Coffee or tea?
  Coffee
• Favourite fruit?
  Persimmon
• Favourite vegetable?
  Kumara (not Asian vegetables!)
• Favourite thing to have for dinner?
  Lasagna
• What's one thing you'd want on a deserted island?
  Survival tools
• What superpower would you have?
  Super strength
• What's your go-to karaoke song?
  Anything from the 70s-90s