Alstonville News
NIASA and Ecohort accreditation guidelines were established by the Nursery and Garden Industry Association of Australia in consultation with the Government sponsored body Horticulture Australia and provide a rigorous testing regime to obtain accreditation.
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The big news at Alpine Alstonville is the fact that the nursery is now accredited under the Nursery Industry Accreditation Scheme Australia (NIASA) and certified under the EcoHort Environmental Management System.
Alpine Dural was a foundation member of the NIASA scheme and the guidelines for this scheme are very familiar to Alstonville Nursery Manager Bruce Wilson. Bruce was previously Production Manager at Alpine Dural and worked under accreditation guidelines for several years. In addition the design features of the Alstonville nursery have always assumed that we would comply with NIASA Accreditation principles. Bruce and his team still needed to satisfy the rigorous standards for NIASA accreditation and we are very pleased that this has been achieved.
Alpine Alstonville is located partly in a water catchment zone and the amount and intensity of the local rainfall provides some definite challenges for environmental performance. Since inception Alpine Alstonville has worked cooperatively with Ballina Council and other stakeholders to deal with these environmental challenges and the independent assessment provided by the Ecohort process is particularly pleasing. Again Ecohort is really a natural outcome of the way Alpine operates. The nursery was designed to comply with all the standards imposed and to provide a sustainable platform for the nursery to operate. A long term planning mentality was employed at each stage of the nursery’s development. It is still immensely satisfying to achieve this certification.