Liam Radford
Service Technician
Liam joined the SED Graders team straight out of high school and he’s never looked back. Having recently completed his full trade qualifications as a sheet metal worker, Liam’s welding, laser cutting and bending and folding skills are integral to the team.
Like all our service technicians, his in-depth knowledge of our graders comes from years of experience assembling our machines and equipment here in our purpose-built workshop.
For Liam, one of the most satisfying aspects of his job is seeing how our grader machinery and equipment help oyster farmers grow their businesses and the knock-on effect that has for rural workers and communities.
“Sometimes workers think that our machines will replace them and take their jobs, but we’ve found the opposite is true,” explains Liam.
“When I go back to visit oyster farms I’ve installed machines in, they’ve actually expanded. They’ve got more workers because the graders allow them to run more oysters and increase stock levels, so there’s more money flowing through the business. Our SED Graders certainly make grading to sell a lot easier, so oyster farmers can then sell more products and that benefits everyone, really.”
For Liam, it’s also important that our graders are mechanically simple, so it’s easy for the farmers to fix and replace small parts themselves.
“A lot of the parts are pretty standard and easy to remove and interchange,” says Liam. “Oyster farmers might be in New South Wales or South Australia – often hundreds of kilometres from anywhere with real access to components – so we try to make it as easy as possible for the farmers to fix it all up so that they’re not so dependent on us.”
Liam loves the variety in his role, where no two days are exactly the same and there’s something new to be working on.