Meet Udaya, our mature apprentice

At Dansand we are continuously training apprentices in our productuin and foundry department, as well as fegularly having management students. We need a trained workforce and we therefore believe that we have a responsibility to equip both younger and more mature people with the skills needed for the workplace.

  Udaya Rajendra is studying to become a process operator at the vocational training centre, EUC Lillebælt. As part of his studies, Udaya has been placed as a mature apprentice at Dansand´s production,were he produces, packs and loads dried quartz sand.  

Education opens doors

Process operator training takes three and a half years. During that time, students learn to manage, regulate and monitor production facilities with automated work processes. “Nearly all industrial businesses, regardless of size, need a process operator. It´s a course which opens many doors,” explains Udaya, who grew up in Nepal but has lived in Denmark for te past nine years.  

Varied tasks, broad experience

During his training, the 39-year-old apprentice will become familar with the most important aspects of Dansand´s production processes. He helps to mount foils on the sacking and bagging machines, puts labels on, and ensures that the machines are working as they should. Udaya will also word with the team in the control rool, which manages and mixes the quartz sand, as well as being introduced to the work in the finished products warehouse. “At Dansand we have the opportunity to try lots of different tasks, and I am being given more and more responsibility. It is fun to go to word, and it also gives you broader experience than if, for example, I had gone to a big industrial business where I think the departments are more seperated and specialised,” says Udaya.  

A good match

Henrik Dåbeck is the acting production manager at Dansand. He says that, as far as possible, there is always an apprentice process operator in the department: “Their profile fits very well the production related tasks in the department. There are lots of processes, many of them complex. Including the management of the sand and sample collection for sieve analyses. Our staff have to be able to react to the results of these analyses. There is great demand for skulled process operators, and that´s why we want to contribute to increasing the labour pool. Otherwise, not being able to recruit people with the right skills could be a problem for us and other businesses in the future.”