Mountain Blue has multiple production sites that both grow and store our berries as well as host our many amazing blueberry pickers in peak season. To ensure these sites continue to produce the best quality berries, at the required volume, we need an exceptional leader to manage operations.
Rose-Anna Bown is the Operations Manager for Mountain Blue responsible for these sites, as well as overseeing the Work, Health, and Safety for the entire Mountain Blue group. In this post, we discover how wide her remit extends, her love of our variety within her role, her daily inspirations, and her love of this industry.
With such a wide remit in her role most days we will find Rose-Anna working through upcoming plans to ensure we have the right people and equipment to complete future tasks and ultimately “ensuring the teams on each site can achieve their goals; growing, maintaining and managing plants and the crops those plants produce”. Rose-Anna also works to resource those teams, with special care taken to train people required with the skills, tools and care including providing suitable accommodation on site.
Another area of interest for Rose-Anna is investigating ways to reduce the risk of incidents or injuries and (thankfully not all that often) meeting with injured workers and their healthcare providers to ensure they have the care and support needed for recovery. Rose-Anna takes pride in “ensuring the way we work is the safest, most efficient and effective method, where incidents and injuries no not occur,”
Rose-Anna is a berry-lover from way back, with blueberries holding a special place in her heart, and her family – which makes Mountain Blue such a great place for her to work. She loves that the blueberry “keep their quality well and that there is such a range of flavours between the varieties” Eureka Sunrise is her overall favourite, although she feels, “at different times of the season, different varieties can come into their own and become a “favourite”.
Eureka Sunrise variety
When not planning best practice operations, you will find Rose-Anna running her own farm, horse-riding or enjoying the outdoors, be that a day at the beach, reading outdoors or sports – participating or watching. She is a woman on the go and is inspired daily by her work in the outdoors. This industry provides that element, but also access to a range of people globally, with whom she can knowledge share, learn from and discover new processes and products to introduce to the world.
Rose-Anna is a passionate team member and works hard to achieve a great job in everything she does no matter the circumstances “You just have to get in and have a go, with a positive attitude and not give up” It’s this drive for excellence that makes Rose-Anna a great operations manager, capable to extending beyond her realm, inspiring others along the way. Interestingly, when asked whom she would invite to a dinner party, Rose-Anna included Turia Pitt, a great woman who exemplifies the power of positivity, drive, and is an example of the ability to overcome challenges, however difficult they may be. Alongside Turia, she includes actor Hugh Jackman for his fun nature and experience, and Nelson Mandela, another inspiring transformational leader.
There is a lot that goes on behind our berries – Discover the people who make the magic happen.