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Our Story
By Australian for Australians

By Australian for Australians


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In 1972, Ron Bailey, a young mechanical engineer from Melbourne, decided that enough was enough.

Australia was overrun with foreign companies that monopolised equipment supply to the local Food and Beverage industry, and he was going to change all that.

Leveraging his ingenuity and inclination for problem-solving, Ron wasted no time in assembling a team to design and manufacture custom-made processing equipment.

Under the motto ‘Built by Australians for Australians’, Foodmach began trading from a humble Melbourne workshop.

One of Foodmach’s early achievements was to manufacture the first Cheezel processing line in Australia.

Ron’s dynamic engineering team then turned their attention to boning rooms for the burgeoning meat industry, spray drying systems for the dairy industry and bulk storage for wineries and confectionary – all in stainless steel.

Using this expertise in shiny metal, we moved into canning lines, beverage lines and breweries. By taking a partnership approach to working with our customers, we created faster solutions with more user-functionality.


Around the 1980s, things started to get really serious at Foodmach.


A Research and Development program was established to put the company in the lead for palletising, depalletising and conveying systems, a proud place we hold to this very day.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and Foodmach is so much more than just food packaging machinery.

From our now not-so-humble manufacturing operations in outer Melbourne, we’ve revolutionised machine-to-machine communication and interfacing, giving line managers absolute control over their equipment with real-time information and Industry 4.0.

Our specialised team of engineers has designed equipment software so easy to use...


... you’ll make changeovers in minutes, not hours.


Our national footprint and full-service offer mean you’ll never have to manage multiple suppliers again – we do it all for you.

Best of all, we can take an ailing production line and make it fast. Faster than anyone else. And safer. Not just for food and beverage, but all kinds of industries. If you manufacture something and need to pack it, we can help you.

Some things have never changed, in all these years.


We still love to solve problems, and we still insist on looking at things from our customer’s perspective.


We know that you need to be able to trust your automation provider every step of the way, and beyond.

And you need equipment that is designed for easier use.

Because we figure that if you’re rewarded for using Foodmach, then we’ll know we got it right.

That’s what true partnerships are all about.

 Let's start one


Read Next: The Foodmach Vision

Read about the WWII history of our factory

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