Now Delacombe is a "thriving metropolis" and more people are looking for jobs in Ballarat, Leigh Edward sees manufacturing playing an important role in the development of the city.
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Ten years ago, he would drive past sheep and cow paddocks to get to work and now so much has changed, but he sees this as a good thing.
"A growing city is a great city because it gives opportunities for commercial development," he said.
"It gives a good pool of staff for manufacturers and gives the government reasons to invest in health, schools and infrastructure."
Connecting young people to different job pathways
The Ferndale Foods chief executive said Ballarat is "an amazing place" for manufacturing.
Along with Ferndale Foods, there is a diverse range of businesses, including multinational companies like Mars Wrigley and McCain, and Ballarat businesses like Springhill Farm and Red Duck Brewery.
Places like these can can offer opportunities for "younger people and school leavers that generally might not know what they're going to do in their life," Mr Edward said.
"A lot of these kids get quite unsure about which way they're going to go in the future, and sometimes can fall between the cracks."
Mr Edward said manufacturing can lead you down so many different pathways like logistics, supply chain, packing, quality assurance, or truck or forklift driving.
"My current engineering manager here is a 38-year-old guy who started here in the warehouse when he was seventeen," he said.
"He's now earning six figures and now has 20 years of service for a job that he got as a casual through a recruitment firm."
Why Ferndale needed to grow
Mr Edward has been involved with the family business all of his life.
The business was founded in 1995 and Mr Edward started officially working there in 2010.
Seven years later, he became the chief executive with big plans for the small confectionery business on Paddys Drive.
"I felt that there was quite a big risk to our size and it was quite vulnerable," he said.
"In order to sure ourselves up for the future, we had to grow."
Mr Edward said the confectionery space is dominated with global brands like Cadbury, Nestle or Mars Wrigley.
"History would say that family-owned confection businesses either go out of business or get brought by the bigger guys," he said.
In 2017 the company was too small to be attractive to a bigger company, but also at risk of a serious hit if something went wrong.
"If one or two decisions went against us - whether that was a deletion in Coles or Woolworths or Aldi - that could spell a 30 per cent revenue cut," he said.
As Mr Edward kept working to diversify the company's products, including starting the So Soft Marshmallow Co in 2017, he gained more credibility in the industry.
"Once upon a time I was on my knees begging, but now we've got diversity in so many different sectors," he said.
"With scale comes a little bit of a power shift."
Charging towards success
Six years after launching the marshmallow business, Mr Edward's team is now producing 16 tons a day.
Then in 2023 he opened up Food Line, which produces healthy snack bars.
It means he has been able to increase the workforce from 20 people to 80 since 2017, and by the middle of 2024 will have tripled revenue over six years.
But Mr Edward wasn't always 100 per cent sure he was going to run the business.
When he was 18, he spent two and a half years travelling overseas.
"I think that was a great ground for seeing how the world works and learning to fend for yourself, and how to live without the bank of mum and dad," he said.
But when the opportunity came up, he found that he loved the job, the people, and the sales and marketing side of things.
And he thinks the city can be a great place to have a good homegrown success story.
"Most of the great commercial enterprises here in Ballarat are homegrown," he said.
"I think about Haymes Paint and Petstock ... clearly we have a high level of amazing individuals, so we must nurture them and encourage these people to invest and stay local."