By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Cutting-edge technology, business success stories and an inspiring rise from adversity by an IT student were the talking points at a Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce showcase event.
At Atura Hotel on 28 August, the latest round of the 2019 business award nominees was unveiled – Aus Group Alliance, AA Electroplaters, Future Recycling Metals and PACT Heating & Cooling.
VCE Year 12 student Koryom Gatluak was announced as the Chamber’s 2019 youth enterprise winner.
Mr Gatluak had come from a war-torn country, family breakdown and scrapes with the law to put himself on track for a university placement.
He used to have a “turbulent relationship” with education, he said.
“This last six or seven months, I’ve learned a lot but I’ve also developed as a person.
“Every single day I look to get better.”
He now focused on hard work and self-improvement – and on mastering the difficult, such as Maths Methods.
He viewed his Chisholm studies as a “beginning, not an end”.
Chisholm Institute’s Kathrin Coglan told the event that Mr Gatluak realized the “power of education”.
With the support of his case manager James, Mr Gatluak was upfront about wanting to change his life, Ms Coglan said.
He had persevered, shown positive attitude and problem-solving to rise to the top-percentile in his Chisholm classes – and “often ahead of the teachers”.
The next step for Mr Gatluak is hopefully a computer science degree at Monash or Melbourne universities.
Green innovation was very much the theme among the business award nominees.
Future Recyling Metals, with plants in Pakenham and Dandenong, is a carbon-neutral business that diverts 70 per cent of collected waste away from landfill.
Brick and concrete rubble was transformed into road base material, green waste and timber into mulch and PVC cable into granulated copper.
Hand-sorting is used to overcome the highly-contaminated household recycling waste, founder Tyrone Landman told the event.
He told of dismantling 180-tonne transformers from power sites – retrieving copper and steel and other waste for recycling.
PACT Heating & Cooling was more than its name suggests – a solar installation specialist in an industry blighted by “cowboys”.
Owner Steve Atkinson, who took over the Dandenong South business founded by his father, has an eye on hydrogen power as the energy source of the future.
Aus Group Alliance has supplied and built noise walls for major roadways such as EastLink, Peninsula Link and the Tullamarine Freeway.
Surprisingly the walls, with a concrete appearance, are formed from recycled plastic. A kilometre of panels would consume two million milk bottles.
“We can solve the recycling problem overnight,” owner Nick Marandos told the audience.
AA Electroplaters has meanwhile started a program to provide computers for disadvantaged students. It has since been backed by Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile the Chamber re-elected Paul Broom as president. Other office-bearers are vice-presidents Roy Sanderson and Peter Helmore, and treasurer Svetlana Basman.
