Past dented boxes of organic couscous and dinged cans of sweetcorn, a small team of volunteers works a factory line, neatly packing cardboard boxes as they roll past.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Inside each goes a canned ham, a Christmas cake, a box of custard, Aeroplane jelly and macadamia nut biscuits. The workers, more used to corporate desks than west Sydney warehouses, add bottles of handwash, Lipton ice tea, packets of pasta and cans of peas.
Foodbank's Christmas hampers, produced for $25 and containing about $80 worth of family meals, are a lifeline to 14,000 NSW and ACT families who would this year go without Christmas dinners if it weren't for charity handouts.
The not for profit has been inundated with orders for the festive food packages and has been forced to source an extra 500 hampers to cope with overwhelming demand from what Foodbank NSW & ACT chief executive Gerry Andersen calls the "working poor".
"It's the low-income families who are the most hungry. They don't have quite enough money to pay rent and energy bills, so food becomes a discretionary spend," he said at the charity's Wetherill Park warehouse.
Reacting to the needs of some 500 agencies including St Vincent De Paul Society and Salvation Army, the charity has prepared for a 15 per cent increase in the need for food relief this Christmas compared to last. 91,000 people in NSW rely on food relief, with an 8 per cent increase in the number of Australians needing food relief this year compared to last, according to The Foodbank Hunger Report.
Mr Andersen said the dramatic increase in hunger across the country is down to changes in government policy.
"The reality is the changes the federal government are making to fix up the finances of the country are putting more pressure on the disadvantaged," Mr Andersen said. "What they're trying to do is have bigger and more efficient agencies, but we've got anecdotal evidence some of the smaller agencies have shut because funding has changed."
Last financial year, the charity provided an estimated 6.8 million meals across NSW and ACT, receiving donations from major food retailers, corporations, farmers' unions and co-operatives. Acting as a "pantry", Foodbank then sorts and sells foodstuffs to agencies who distribute the fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, meat and non-perishables to low-income families, the unemployed, single-parent families and the homeless.
Twelve volunteers on the line pack 500 hampers a day, with many of the workers coming from GE, Microsoft and QBE. Foodbank has negotiated ham, cake and custard at "mate's rates" to add as much holiday cheer as possible to the packs, which will be distributed over the next two weeks. Foodbank labelling is kept to a minimum so as not to dissuade families from accepting help.
"Aussies are proud," Mr Andersen said. "We hate putting our hands up, so we have to be careful about putting our brand on things - people don't want a Foodbank label sitting on their shelf."
Back on the line, progress is swift as volunteer Mark Holman, ofQBE's Parramatta offices, tapes yet another box closed and loads it onto a pallet.
"We sit in an office all day, we've got it pretty easy," he said. "A lot of people out there have got it tough and we've got a chance to get out and help people."
