Community
17 April, 2025
South west services celebrate milestone
SOUTH West Healthcare (SWH) and its regional partners have last Thursday celebrated a major milestone in the life of its regional linen and supply business, marking the 10th anniversary with tours of the new state of the art Regional Logistics Distribution Centre (RLDC) facility.
The regional supply collaboration between SWH and Terang and Mortlake Health Service, Heywood Rural Health, Moyne Health Services, Portland District Health, Timboon and District Healthcare Service, Casterton Memorial Hospital, Western District Health Service, Great Ocean Road Health, Colac Area Health and Hesse Rural Health, allows each service to work together to increase its supply buying power for the region.
“The RLDC is a unique model in healthcare – there is nothing else like it in Victoria,” SWH chief executive officer Craig Fraser said.
“Today’s state of the art facility is a direct result of the vision shown by the 11 health services over 10 years ago.
“The commitment, back then, to work together on this successful model gave government the confidence to invest in this new facility.
“The benefits of this shared model have been clear on many occasions but was particularly evident during COVID-19 when the model enabled our teams to work together locally to deliver incredibly innovative and timely solutions to supply chain issues - ranging from surgical gloves to hand sanitiser to the distribution of COVID vaccinations.
“As we all know, this was in an environment particularly in hospitals, when the world-wide supply chain was under extreme stress and in some cases failing.”
The RLDC sees three trucks travelling more than 900 kilometres every day to supply hospitals with medical supplies and fresh linen.
It employs 55 people and contributes $5 million annually to the local economy, providing a service that delivers both efficiencies and improved services to all the health services in the south west.
“Working together we’ve been able to maximise our resources and our personnel, and we are fortunate enough to have teams not only ensuring delivery and supply of stock across the region but looking into the identification and implementation of new products in order to reduce our environmental impact,” Mr Fraser said.
RLDC chief operating officer Andrew Trigg said the facility provided a “great example” of the significant reduction of medical wasted going to landfill through the identification and implementation of compostable products.
“Following the substitution of plastic medical supplies with sustainable alternatives (pill cups, straws, plastic trays/kidney dishes, injection trays, anaesthetic packs etc) since 2020, our supply service has prevented millions of single-use items from going to landfill, and the companies we have been working with are now able to share those products across the country with far-reaching benefits,” he said.
Anniversary celebrations will take place at the 12-month old purpose-built Regional Logistics Distribution Centre in Warrnambool’s industrial estate, which includes a fully automated laundry and a Dematic Autostore – a robotic and automatic retrieval system which sorts and distributes medical supplies in a temperature, humidity and positive air pressure-controlled environment.
“We are really proud of this state-of-the-art facility and the event and celebrations gives us an opportunity to open the doors of the new RLDC to guests and to our own staff so that they can see what all the fuss has been about,” Mr Trigg said.
Mr Frasier said SWH made the staff shuttle bus available so clinical and administration staff were able to attend the facility.
“We have made the staff shuttle bus available so that clinical and administration staff can come and gain an appreciation of what other teams in our organisation do,” he said.
“Where would we be as a health service without medical supplies and clean linen- they do a great job.”
The event was attended by members of Health Share Victoria, partner health services and members of Warrnambool City Council and council staff.
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