Melbourne Markets

The Melbourne Market is Victoria’s wholesale fruit, vegetable and cut flower trading centre, one of six central fresh produce markets in Australia.  Operating from a purpose-built facility on a 67-hectare site with 120,000 square metres of warehousing space at Epping, the Market provides the critical link between growers, wholesalers, retailers and the fresh produce supply chain.

Approximately 2,750 businesses use the Market as a base, buying and selling fresh produce in the early morning hours for distribution across Victoria and Australia, and over 2,000 individual fruit and vegetable buyers, representing independent greengrocers, supermarkets, restaurants and food processors, source their produce direct from the Market.

About one year after opening, the Melbourne Market Authority engaged ID-LAB to develop a more functional signage system. The focus was on improving the process of loading and unloading, which had been previously overlooked in place of a building-focused signage system. 

Our site audit identified several areas that could be improved to facilitate better wayfinding across the site. This included improving the entrance experience by designing clearer gates and lane guidance, improving vehicular directional signage to create a more user-friendly system for low light conditions, and developing a more logical and identifiable parking system to assist all users in the environment.

As the critical users of the market are the truck drivers delivering and picking-up goods, and almost all vehicle movements happen at night, we designed a highly visible, oversized, and well-illuminated wayfinding system.