The Health and Safety Act (1992) means that employers have a duty to provide appropriate protective clothing and equipment. Employers have a responsibility to ensure the clothing is worn and the employee has a responsibility to wear it.

Today's wide and diverse work environment can make it difficult for employers to know what the most appropriate clothing is for the specific hazards and risk that their employees face.

Yakka NZ is a leading manufacturer of technical protective clothing and works closely with both safety distributors and end users. The team at Yakka NZ has an extensive understanding of the particular risks employees face in a wide range of work environments including smelters, steel mills, electrical live wire, military and fire fighting. This knowledge has led to a range of stock garments that offers burn protection for electrical workers to protect from arc flash, explosions, flame burst situations and protection from molten metal splash. Providing the best burn protective garment for a particular risk is a process that requires a level of expertise. Yakka NZ is the leading supplier of burn protective garments in New Zealand. When selecting a garment to be worn to protect against burns it is important to define what the wearer is being protected against - convective heat, radiant heat, molten metal splash or sparks, flash fires, explosions or acids. In defining the hazard more specifically the design and fabric selection of the garment becomes more apparent. Through Yakka Apparel Solutions Ltd., the company supplies specialty products for burn protection to the Armed Forces.

Yakka NZ also offers a design service whereby the Product Development team and the Sales team work closely with the end user designing specific garments tailor made to the particular risk faced. Yakka's modern and flexible manufacturing plant on Auckland's North Shore, which is ISO accredited, enables Yakka to produce highly technical garments in small quantities.

Product Development is a key focus for Yakka and the team are constantly researching new developments in technical fabrics. A project team works closely with both fabric suppliers and end users to ensure that both the fabrics and design of the garment is the most appropriate for the particular hazard faced. An extensive user trial is always completed before any new product is launched. In recent years this focus on product development has led to a number of important developments including a burn protective overall that also meets the AS/NZS 4602 standard for high visibility safety garments, and a new chainsaw chap, that has been hugely successful and resulted in large export orders. Yakka NZ has also been involved in extensive design, fabric sourcing and sampling for the New Zealand Fire Service. In fact, if you are working in a high-risk, high-skill job, chances are the protective gear you use was made by Yakka.

The changes to the Health and Safety in Employment Act have made it a duty for employers to provide appropriate protective clothing. The wide range of work situations and risks makes it difficult for the lay man to know what the most appropriate garment is and a poor choice can actually cause more injury to the worker. To ensure you make the right choice use the extensive knowledge and expertise of Yakka NZ.

If you want to know more about the Yakka range of burn protective and speciality garments or their custom design service, give the team a call on 09 443 5543.