In an exciting move for South Australian bakery owners, the Baking Association of Australia (BAA) has launched an Assistant Bakers Program.

The program will support overseas candidates that have baking experience but don’t yet have formal qualifications to make the move to Australia.

Through their work as assistant bakers each of the candidates will receive training three to four times over two years and be paid under the General Retail Award (Baker Level 1 or 2).

BAA executive officer Tony Smith said this program was based on one initially established by the SA Skills Commission, and was another way for bakery owners to bring on board employees with experience.

“The candidates will be people who understand the fundamentals of baking and help in the bakery weighing up, baking the bread, and doing general duties,” he said.

“The South Australian program will be the first one rolled out, because they came up with the idea. But it’s going to come online in all the eastern states in the next couple of months – Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales are all on board.”

Tony said there would be 15 candidates per state who would be able to travel to Australia on a training visa.

“Each of the candidates will have at least 12 months of industry experience in their own country and then they’ll be working here for two years,” he said.

“The program will also help to take the pressure off business owners that are struggling with the skills shortage.”

The Assistant Bakers pilot program will be run separately in each state until all the hurdles are worked out. Tony said any bakeries that were interested in taking part in the Assistant Bakers Program should contact the BAA directly.

“If they contact us, we can then sign them up,” he said.