08/03/2010

AWTA Melbourne Flood Damage

On Saturday afternoon the Melbourne AWTA Ltd Raw Wool Laboratory was flooded following an extremely heavy hail storm. Accumulated hail obstructed the laboratory roof drainage and a deluge of rainwater penetrated the roof in many places, soaking much of the testing equipment below.  This incident had the potential to affect AWTA Ltd clients throughout the Eastern states of Australia.

Over the past 48 hours AWTA staff and contractors have been able to recover, repair or replace most of the damaged equipment. We expect to be able to resume business as usual on Tuesday, 9th March 2010.

Whilst we have incurred a slight reduction in capacity in some areas of the laboratory, we are still able to conduct our complete range of tests. At this stage we do not anticipate that there will be any noticeable delay in issuing of test results to clients. It is important to note that whilst some of the equipment that has been recovered is working satisfactorily at present, until it can be given a thorough overhaul it may still be vulnerable to failure. Should this occur, we may experience delays in issuing test results. We will notify clients immediately by email if this occurs.

AWTA Ltd has a comprehensive and rehearsed Disaster Recovery Plan in place. In the event of a partial or total loss of capacity in any of our laboratories we are able to divert samples to other laboratories for testing. On this occasion this was not necessary.