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Minka Joinery sees ‘hand-built’ demand return
SUNSHINE Coast luxury construction company, Minka Joinery is seeing its faith in ‘hand-built’ architectural joinery vindicated with the return of local demand after six years of seeking work everywhere but close to home.
The onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) saw Minka Joinery’s work in the region surrounding its Kunda Park, Sunshine Coast base evaporate. 
Manager Viktor Barta and his small team were unwilling to shift focus to the more locally accepted generic production line, so they fortuitously took the unorthodox action of turning their attention to the hard-to-crack – yet comparatively stable – Melbourne industry.
It has paid off, with Minka Joinery developing systems that see innovative and often complex joinery work created on the Sunshine Coast and despatched to Victoria for expert fitment – and now the local market is again seeing demand return.
Mr Barta said Melbourne projects have the 14-strong Sunshine Coast team’s calendar booked solid for the first six months of 2015, but he is thrilled that local projects are back on the agenda.
“We are seeing the high end projects coming back on line,” Mr Barta said. “People are mentally and financially ready to invest again and spend money on luxury items. It’s really exciting to see and that’s what drives our innovation.” 
Minka – coming from the Japanese expression for ‘built by hand’ – has thrived in the high-end Melbourne construction industry, meeting the needs of architects who had previously found their creative internal fit-out concepts difficult to be made.
To help establish the market in 2008, builders and architects were flown up to the Kunda Park factory, to see the highly-organised operation. Jobs started coming almost immediately.
Mr Barta said interstate clients initially concerned about the ‘tyranny of distance’ in such complicated jobs were reassured once they witnessed Minka Joinery’s flawless method of transit care and the final product.
Entire fit-outs ordered from interstate are today built and packaged on the Sunshine Coast and sent the 2000km to Victoria in complete packages – on time without a hitch.
“Logistically we are able to get access anything we need and product can be shipped to any place,” Mr Barta said. “Being on the Sunshine Coast has been a great benefit because we are in a unique position to service the entire east coast of Australia.
“The builders in Melbourne had found the same frustrations as the builders here, with cabinetry not arriving on time or arriving incorrectly and projects being delayed; but with us, builders are able to see a large home fitted out in one stage saving them many weeks. The cabinetry became the smoothest part of their projects.” 
In its first eight years prior to the GFC, Minka Joinery had strived to establish a reputation as one of the country’s most reputable high-end architectural joinery and cabinetry businesses, Mr Barta said.
He said the firm had proven itself up to any challenge a client or designer could dream up, including a $250,000 walk-in robe modelled on a Prada store in Milan.
But in 2008, when the GFC struck, what he called “the industry’s renaissance period” was suddenly over and the Kunda Park business immediately lost 75 percent of its business, “facing devastating consequences, like so many others”.
The move to the testing Melbourne market, while driven out from a business survival imperative, Mr Barta said, had now become a launch platform for Minka Joinery’s future growth and stability.
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