My Engineering Journey

Beginnings

I grew up on a very large farm in West Suffolk here my father was a farm manager. It was one of the biggest mechanised farms in the country and so I spent a lot of time working with machines from an early age — it was here I developed, and still have, a love for farming, the countryside and engineering.

As I got older, I spent time over the holidays working with engineering companies specialising in things like grain silos and other industrial installations. That got me thinking that there aren’t many jobs in farm management, and that I would be better off going into agricultural engineering.

1992-1996: Harper Adams University

I went to Harper Adams University in Shropshire and graduated with a BSc in Agricultural Engineering with Marketing and Management. I didn’t want to study pure engineering. My experience on the farm had shown me that farmers and agricultural companies had a real need for people that can interface between the pure engineering knowledge required and the problem-solving challenges they face. I wanted a job where I could be this link between the two disciplines, so this degree was perfect for that.

One of the great things about it was that we got to learn about everything from machinery and equipment design, to using logic controllers and early PLCs, which has changed automation as we know it today. At the same time, I got a grounding in all aspects of management theory and business.

I actually came away from university with more money than I started with. As a student I worked as a night manager in the university bar. It was a big bar, with some 40 pumps, and I worked there every fourth night — looking back, this really gave me the working mentality that I have to this day.

1993-1996 – Herbert Engineering

As part of the sandwich year on my degree, I undertook two placements. One was working with a very large mechanised farm in Ohio in the United States the other was Herbert Engineering, a large potato handling equipment manufacturer that made equipment for farms and large industrial packhouses. .

Here, I designed an automated one-tonne potato box filler. Potatoes are as delicate as eggs and damage easily, so they must be treated gently during processing. The existing industry standard was slow, out of date and expensive.  I redesigned the concept and the action of the box filling allowing the process to be fully automated by using conveyor tracks to move the boxes around. The company went on to commercialise and manufacture the unit.

1996-2018 – Chafer Machinery

My first job out of university was in engineering sales, selling agricultural crop sprayers for a company called Chafer, part of the Norsk Hydro group. It quickly transpired that I wasn’t great at sales and was much better at the technical side of things!

Thankfully, the company transferred me to a great project where we used near-infrared reflectance technology to scan the colour intensity of a crop, to deliver just the amount of fertiliser needed for a healthy crop. This was done in real-time, a novelty back in 1996, and we even used four-seater aircraft to carry out extensive mapping of the fields — there were no drones back then! I was involved in the team setup to  commercialised the technology, and I got to travel across Europe, Argentina and the US.

When Norsk Hydro sold Chafer a few years later, I was invited to be part of the management buyout and still own a small part of Chafer, which is a leading crop sprayer manufacturer in the UK.

2010-Present: NerG Ltd

In 2010, I went on a stag-do to Germany. As we landed in Munich airport, I vividly remember being surprised that every building had solar panels on the roof. On my return to the UK I got quotes for solar panels for my own home and got back quotes up to £15k.

A friend in Germany had told me solar PV could cost as low as €4000, so I purchased the panels myself and quickly realised that the mark-ups in the industry came down to the need for accreditation and certification for installation. Undeterred, I went on a three-day course, became qualified and began installing solar panels locally – this was the start of NerG.

In 2014, we diversified into biomass boiler installations in response to the introduction of the government’s renewable heat incentive (RHI). Farmers across the eastern part of the UK were looking to meet their commercial heating needs using their readily available supply of woodchips, so NerG was well-placed to serve this community.

Despite this, I understand better than most that the heat and power market can change very quickly, which is why today NerG offers a diverse offering. This includes everything from biomass boilers and commercial heat pumps to combined heat and power (CHP) generation installations.

The approach to engineering across the farming sector favours building long-lasting relationships that deliver on customer service, problem solving and ingenuity. Farming is a small world and everyone knows everyone, so if you give poor service to one customer, the world will know about it. Growing up in farming, it doesn’t matter if the challenge is hydraulic, mechanical, electrical or chemical, I’m in my element when I’m solving these problems.