Good ideas come naturally for one enterprising farmer

There is an Eddie Stobart fan club, there are his dedicated lorry spotters and then there are those who get moderately excited stealing a glimpse of the lorry’s name on the driver’s door. While Rode farmer, Andy Fussell, is none of these he cannot help feeling inspired.

“Eddie Stobart lorries are unique as are the spotters which follow him. I have friends of Fussels on Facebook, maybe I could ask them to do the same. Wouldn’t it be brilliant to have your own spotters?” he laughs – and the thought is not entirely implausible.

While he does not have a 1,000-plus fleet on the road, he does have 26 dry bulk wagons transporting raw materials across the country - one of which now has his face all over it in a bid to make more people aware of him, and his business.

“The wagon makes journeys up and down the M6 all the time so it seemed a good idea. What I didn’t realise is the tiny pimple which was on my nose got magnified ten-fold as the picture of my face was plastered all over the lorry.”

Andy describes himself as a far-mer, but scratch the surface and he is also a haulage contractor, a biodiesel recycler and a food producer. That is in addition to his feed mixing business, which supplies farmers in the South West with 45,000 tonnes of cattle feed. But despite all this, it’s the farming side he loves, the rest he appears to put down to ‘good ideas’ (all of which have gone on to be successful business enterprises).

Excited

It is his most recent venture which gets him ‘excited’, as he waves two paper bags which contain his latest product development, Croutons (otherwise known as Snack Doughs).

“I’ve been working on these for ages with a local bakery,” he says. “I can’t believe they’ve arrived today. One is flavoured with our garlic oil and the other with chilli oil. Chunky croutons still with their crusts on taste great and the fact they are made with sourdough gives me that crunch. I’m really excited about them as they have been in my head for a while.”

Of course there is more to the crouton than its looks. Crucial to its taste is Andy’s home-grown cold-pressed rapeseed oil, which he diversified into four years ago. It was an idea borne out of declining oilseed rape prices and the need to maximise value from his most important break crop.

“I liked the idea of creating something which had my name on it. Poor prices meant I had to find a way of adding value. It’s very difficult for any farmer to sell direct face-to-face but it was something I wanted to do.”

First of all he tried developing his own biofuel and bought cold presses onto his farm in the hope of squeezing out more margins from his existing commercial crop, which has been grown on the farm for 20 years. Although the figures did not add up for biodiesel production at Church Farm, the production of a quality rapeseed oil definitely did.

“I knew of one chap who was cold pressing his rapeseed and thought I could do the same as hardly anyone was doing it. I can get around 600 half-litre bottles of cold pressed oil from one tonne of OSR and sell them at £5 to £6 a bottle.

“My grandfather was a brewer who supplied 60 of our own pubs throughout the South West so you could say the flair for bottling was in my genes.”

New launch

The production of cold pressed oil was his intention and happens when no heat is applied during the extraction process which, although results in a lower yield, ensures the oil retains its quality and flavour.

“We purposely don’t put our crop through any super heated system, which produce the standard vegetable oil found in supermarkets and cooking. In the commercial markets it is heated at least three times to extract every little bit out of it and then it is bleached, deodorised and, in some cases, has hydrogen thrown in. It is not good.”

The cold pressing process also preserves its health benefits. “Rapeseed oil has 10 times the amount of omega 3 which olive oil has and has half the saturated fat. It can be taken up to a much higher temperature without smoking, burning or losing its integrity. You just try them with roast potatoes and you’ll see what I mean.”

Hiring a marketing and branding expert - Gary Holloway - the pair began brainstorming ideas to build the brand. “I wanted it to be personal, British and something which had personality.” The result was a little character graphic and was launched as the logo which now appears on Fussel Fine Foods - along with just one ‘l’ to make the packaging look cleaner. “It was exciting creating a new product. I’m used to sowing it, growing it and stocking it onto a lorry.”

The crops on-farm are divided equally between OSR, wheat and winter spring barley. This year he will use 150 tonnes of his own oilseed rape to produce the oil, almost a 20 per cent rise in yield on last year. The remaining half of the crop is sold commercially to a grain merchant.

OSR plays an important role in his rotation and is cut early August to allow Andy two months to prepare the ground for winter wheat, which is sown in the first week of October. The seeds are planted at 60 plants per sq metre and three sets of beehives are present to aid pollination. Two 17ft cut combines have now been replaced with a state of the art 25ft cut with a single combine, which harvests the crop late July ready to be pressed, bottled and distributed.

Husbandry is kept as simple as possible, beginning with a pre-emergent herbicide, and a possible fungicide for Phoma if needed. Andy’s biggest headache, however is the pollen beetle which becomes rife during flowering.

“They love the warmth,” says Andy. “When oilseed rape flowers the beetles burrow in and destroy the stamen causing a lack of yield. There is a threshold to be mindful of and once you have 15 beetles per flowering head you’re in trouble and will see a serious reduction in yield.” To help combat this, an insecticide is used, although Andy has experimented with different varieties using earlier flowering types. Cabarnet and Sesame are used and while there seems to be no apparent difference in taste, he does believe timings are crucial.

“The earlier they flower and the colder the weather, the less susceptible they are to infestation. But this year we had a warm April and the plan didn’t work. Last year we had quite a cold April so it worked. This year it didn’t and we sprayed the lot.”

Tough talking

After winning a gold award in the 2007 Taste of the West competition, Andy expanded his range to include mayonnaise, flavoured oils and dressings. Shortly after, he was approached by Tesco.

“When Tesco came to do the local thing they approached Taste of the West and asked to meet with their Gold award winners. The day I was due to meet the buyers, my mum was very ill and I nearly didn’t go, but I was persuaded otherwise so off I went with two bottles.

“I gave my pitch and they asked me how many stores I could do. I stupidly asked them what they had in mind. One of the buyers said if ‘I said to you 20 stores could you do it.’ I said yes and then offered to do 40 stores if they wanted me too - bearing in mind at this point I was barely producing anything.

“The other buyer said they had heard on the grapevine I didn’t like them much. I said I didn’t have a problem with them as people but I did not like what they had done to dairy farmers who have been massacred by the multiples.

“I explained I wasn’t their greatest fan and I wouldn’t shop with them but if, as a business, they were happy to take my oil and pay me within 30 days then I would be happy to supply them. They asked me to leave a bottle which I did.”

That was October 2007 but it was not until July 2008 he got his first bottles in store thanks to a raft of processes and procedures.

“It was a tough time,” says Andy, who is married to Lesley and is dad to Tom, 17, and Ben 15. “My mum died and there were endless processes to comply with but I worked it from the inside to the outside.”

While other supply outlets followed, he has seized every opportunity to promote the brand and raise awareness of the crop. When he is not trying to convince Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans that rapeseed oil makes the best fried egg sandwich (it was one of the show’s daily topical debates) he is testing his nerves in front of the Dragon’s Den panel on television.

Andy went on the show to seek investment in the business last year. He was criticised by James Khan for his choice of clothing (he wore dungarees) and was told the Dragons would not be ploughing any money into his venture. But Mr Ballantyne later placed an order for oil to be supplied to his restaurant near Shepton Mallet, Somerset along with other positive feedback behind the cameras.

“I’m sure I took them a bit by surprise,” says Andy. “My business and background are very unlike those of the majority of entrepreneurs who go on the programme. But my products have gained their recognition and I have to be pleased with that.”

With turnover increasing from £15,000 to £200,000 in just four years, Andy is determined to build the brand into a national name and with his enthusiasm to grab every marketing opportun-ity available and chat to anyone who will listen it has served his diversification well.

“I’ve got great staff and I don’t really know how I have managed to do it all, it just all ties in. At the end of the day I’m an arable farmer and I love what I do and that’s the best feeling.

“It’s a dream for me to do this. I love planting and watching it grow, but I love the fact we bring in the harvest and you can watch your whole year’s work coming together.”

As the rest of the enterprises continue to complement the core farming business, you cannot help but wonder what his next project will be. For now, the quest to spot a glimpse of a public face on a Fussell lorry may only be a matter of time.

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name