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ONE of Portland’s captains of industry Brian Murphy will retire on August 3 as site manager at the Incitec Pivot fertiliser production facility after almost 23 years in the position.
He has held the site manager’s position since 1990, and apart from a two-year stint at Geelong from 1988-90, has been employed at the Portland facility since 1975.
“I made the decision to retire about 18 months ago … it just felt like the right time to go,” he said.
“There were two of us working in the lab when I started as an environmental chemist, and we both made a decision that 55 was a good age to retire — he retired at 55 and I kept on going for a few more years”
Mr Murphy said there had been significant changes since he started in 1975.
“We still produce the same volumes of single super phosphate as we did back then, but we are doing it with less employees, we had 130 when I started, it is 50 people now,” he said.
“There are various reasons for that, computers is one … another is that we used to employ around 40 people in maintenance, maintenance is now done by contractors.”
He listed his main satisfaction as site manager as seeing people progress through the organisation, particularly people who start on the factory floor and progress.
Read more in Wednesday’s edition of the Portland Observer.
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