General Plastic Ballarat offers a clear solution

Dale has operated General Plastic Ballarat for the past eight years, providing plastic products to customers in Ballarat, the central highlands and western Victoria to the South Australian border.

The onset of the pandemic brought significant disruption to the family-owned, Delacombe-based business.

Pre-pandemic, part of Dale’s business involved assisting smaller sign writers to cut their signs for installation.

When the pandemic hit in March, most of this and his other regular work dried up.

While that hurt, a silver lining soon presented itself.

In the space of a few weeks, Ballarat businesses and organisations needed to create COVID-safe workspaces.

And the demand for plastic sneeze guards, the clear barriers that have become such a familiar site in shops over the past few months, surged.

Dale says he didn’t need to go searching for opportunities to make and install the guards. Rather, the jobs found him.

“We didn’t push it that hard. We probably started with a few friends and acquaintances at first. It went from there,” Dale says.

Since then, Dale has been installing plastic shields in local shops, doctors’ surgeries, hospitals and chemists, protecting customers and staff.