Matera Electrical is an Aboriginal owned and operated Electrical Contracting Company who are registered with ABDWA (Aboriginal Business Directory Western Australia).
Matera Electrical has been awarded Winner of the Small Business Employer of the Year at the 2022 WA Training Awards by the Western Australian Government. This was announced by the Acting Education and Training Minister, Rita Scaffidi on 30th September 2022, celebrating training and its role in supporting a strong WA economy. Matera Electrical’s directors Phil Matera (Aboriginal) & Dean Kerns accepted the award on stage on the awards night hosted at Crown Perth.
Matera Electrical have continually worked alongside Woodside who has been instrumental in helping them achieve their aspirations to be a proud, Aboriginal owned and operated electrical contracting company that helps advance the life-expectancy and socio-economic gap that exist between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Matera Electrical currently ranks as one of the largest Indigenous electrical contracting company in WA, according to Business News.
With 15% of Matera Electrical’s workforce being Indigenous, they are able to provide career opportunities for many people in Perth, Karratha and the Pilbara. A cornerstone of their work with Woodside enables Matera Electrical to employ apprentices every year, who are trained over a four year period, creating a pipeline of skilled electricians in Western Australia. One of these is their first Aboriginal female apprentice, Shenay Dadleh who recently completed her apprenticeship in 2022.
Another success story is Kieran Turner, who commenced his electrical apprenticeship with Matera Electrical Services undertaking several years of training and specialist courses to become a qualified EEHA Electrician across Woodside’s KGP and Pluto LNG facilities. As an outcome of this journey, Kieran joined Woodside in an operator traineeship moving with his young family to Karratha several years ago and continues to thrive.
Matera Electrical pride themselves on excellence in safety standards with approximately 80% of their employees spending roughly 200 hours per month in training. They also have their Indigenous Employment Training Program which seeks to deliver cultural recognition, awareness, employment and training opportunities for Indigenous Australians and their communities.
It was all of these factors, which helped Matera Electrical win this exciting award.
