Blog

My day starts catching up with Ross Fleming, who is the Manager of our mixed farm enterprise. We run through plans for the day ahead and any particular issues or challenges we are facing. We also review and discuss crop management, additional labour requirements as well as any expenditure we may have coming up, currently we are looking to build an additional crop storage facility in time for harvest 2022.

It’s then time to drop my kids in at school and head to the office. I usually arrive just before nine and sit down at my desk with a coffee to check emails. I dislike looking at them on my phone, so I’ll use this time to catch up on anything that has come in overnight. It’s then on to talk with the other Directors, Peter and Alan. We’ll talk through plans for the day, staff recruitment and any correspondence from customers we may have had. These short meetings focus on the day-to-day management of the business and make sure that we’re all aware of what is going on and is one of the benefits of being a small business which allows us to react in an ever-changing marketplace.

I am personally responsible for sourcing the wheat, barley and rye products that we sell at Silvery Tweed. There has been a request from a customer come in for a very specific amount and I need to calculate the costings on raw material so I can feed that information back to our sales team and they will answer the enquiry. Once this has been done, I have a meeting with a client and our NPD manager, Julie and Head of Technical, Martin to discuss an ongoing project. We have a stage-gate process that is designed to keep projects on course and ensure that we deliver on time so that the client has their new product on the shelves by the date they said it would be.

I’ve not brought any lunch with me today, so I’ll head over to the supermarket to pick up a sandwich and a bag of crisps before tackling the paperwork that awaits me. Nobody wants to review energy contracts or sign off an invoice on an empty stomach.

Once I’ve got my paperwork sorted, I head off for a walk around the site. We have a client here reviewing a plant trial that we have carried out for them, so it’s nice to say hello and have a catch up with them. We have some building work going on, so I take the opportunity to see how that is coming along and talk to some of the staff in the warehouse.

Before I leave for the day I’ll tidy up my desk and make a to-do list for the next day. I find that a list of critical points keeps me focused and on top of what needs to be done. I’ll review the diary so I can plan and then it’s a final call to Ross at the farm for an update of what has happened and see if there is anything cropped up during the day that I need to be aware of.

Once that is done, it’s time to head home, have some tea and spend time with the kids before they go to bed.