Damian Pederick grew up in the Goulburn Valley, the stretch of North-central Victoria that feeds much of Australia. This is where SPC, Campbell’s Soup’s, Heinz, and dozens of other food manufacturers have operated for generations, turning the region's fruit, dairy, and grain into the products that stock supermarket shelves from Cairns to Fremantle.
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It's a region that takes food safety seriously. When produce spoils or a facility fails an audit, real businesses suffer and real people are affected. Damian developed a deep understanding of the challenges of meeting Food Industry requirements and expectations from the beginning, and it shaped everything he went on to build with Remax.
When he left the family business in the 1999, he set up a new business with his father, working from a shed at the rear of the family home in Nathalia, regional Victoria. He started by supplying specialist lubricants and equipment solutions to the food manufacturers in the region. He was on their floors most days, listening to what they needed, learning how their operations worked, and building the kind of relationships that take time and genuine care to develop.
“My drive was that I really enjoyed and appreciated the food industry, and what it meant for the region,” Damian says. “I felt that there was a lot more that we could do in support of it.”
The evolution of the business into door solutions started with a unique take on the humble strip curtain. Food facilities need to move stock and machinery through doorways constantly, but they also need to maintain hygiene barriers and temperature zones at all times. In the early 2000’s, the PVC strip curtains available were functional but scratched badly every time a forklift passed through. This created visibility issues on both sides.
Damian sourced and introduced a better solution: ribbed PVC strips that dispersed better on contact and minimised wear and tear, -staying cleaner and maintaining better visibility. It sounds simple, but it was an improvement that was new to the region. Word got around and trust in the solutions offer by Remax Doors developed quickly.
That's how Remax Doors began: with a problem needing solving and someone willing to go and find the answer.
From strip curtains, customers started asking about swing doors. Then rapid roller doors. Then cold store doors and high-speed doors and specialised doors for specific applications. Some of those early customers are still with Remax today.
“We'd go into a place selling strip curtains,” Damian recalls, “and they'd say: what about those fast roll-up doors? Can you give us a quote for one of them?”
Each time, the approach was the same: understand the problem properly, find or build the right solution, and stand behind it.
By 2007, the business had grown to such a level that Remax was manufacturing most of its own door solutions. A new factory began producing the double acting swing doors still used extensively in supermarkets across Australia today. The family shed was still in use however, -now serving as a workshop for developing high speed door prototypes! Concepts were pieced together, software developed, and doors opened and closed on automatic timers testing functionality and wear and tear.
“I remember going to bed hearing the doors opening and closing all night,” he says, laughing. Hundred of thousand cycles, to prove they were built to last.
It was methodical, hands-on, and utterly characteristic of the way the business had always operated. The doors that came out of that process were Australian-made, engineered to Australian conditions, and backed by nearly a decade of direct knowledge about what Australian businesses really need. The rigor and high expectations of the Australian Food Industry helped shape the DNA that now produce Australia’s most trusted High Speed Door manufacturer.
