2022 CSC Business Hack

EMILY AITCHISON 2021 NSch & KENDRA HALL 2022 NSch

On day four of the CSC, Scholars visited four businesses at the Food Enterprise Park, each with a unique challenge in need of creative solutions. During each visit, we were introduced to the business then were left to analyse their problem, generate ideas and create a proposal to pitch our solution.

WHO DID WE VISIT?

practices and how we are going to tackle the big issues facing many farmers including the effects of climate change and labour shortages.

• AF Group - the largest memberowned farm buying group in the UK with a turnover of over £250 million • Condimentum – Created by mustard and mint growers who came together to protect English-grown ingredients, including building a state-of-the-art mill outside Norwich • Fischer Farms – Revolutionising vertical farming using scalable, next generation systems with a focus on agri-science, big data and environmental activism • The Goat Shed - A farm shop stocking the very best of Norfolk’s artisan producers, founded by 2020

Nuffield Scholar Sam Steggles.

FISCHER FARMS

Fischer Farms is creating a revolution in farming with its scalable, next generation vertical farms. Fischer has begun works on a £25m project to build the world’s largest vertical farm on the Food Enterprise Park in Norfolk. We started our business hack session with a presentation from Tristan Fischer, Founder and CEO, whose background and interests are in agri-tech and carbon markets. For his business hack, Tristan asked Scholars to put forward potential ways that ‘horizontal farmers’ may feel threatened by vertical farming and how his business might address these concerns proactively. We spent time in our groups discussing whether or not vertical farming is a threat to horizontal farming. This became quite an emotive and vibrant debate between groups. This allowed us to discuss future farming

THE GOAT SHED

2020 Nuffield Farming Scholar Sam Steggles, founder of Fielding Cottage Goat’s Cheese, set up his wonderful farm shop during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The farm shop and kitchen offer a friendly shopping experience, boasting a fantastic selection of fresh local fruit, vegetables, meats, fish, bread and dairy products. They proudly support local, stocking the very best of Norfolk’s artisan producers. Sam challenged Scholars to find ways to build loyalty with existing customers and attract new people to the shop. The winning team pitched a ‘Billy Box’ scheme, similar to a traditional loyalty card but instead of receiving ‘money off’ vouchers the reward would be a box of items. With the feel of a gift, the box would vary in value depending on monthly spend, including the shopper’s favourite items as well as new products and seasonal specials. The idea would promote loyalty by making customers feel valued and looking forward to receiving their ‘Billy Box’ each month. This could also be extended to feature in local holiday cottages as a welcome pack of items to promote the shop and encourage holidaying visitors.

Sam Steggles giving an overview of his business before starting the Business Hack

Toby Simpson 2022 NSch gives presentation for new mobile app

Formerly known as Anglia Farmers, AF Group is the largest member-owned farm buying group in the UK and boasts £250 million in turnover every year. With a vast product range including fuel, machinery, mobile and internet services, energy, seed and feed, the business is looking for new ways to make buying easier and more convenient for their members. A mobile app is one such option being considered, and AF Group asked Scholars to help them explore app design and functionality that would both bring value to farmers and encourage sales. Excited by the challenge, there was a palpable buzz in the room as creative juices flowed and markers were put to easel paper. Scholars presented a plethora of ideas using a combination of colourful sticky notes and drawn designs to members of AF Group’s management team: • Integration with other farm programmes to bring resource data into one place • Commodity market predictions • Weather displays • “Matchmaking” services connecting farmers and suppliers • Reminders when certain products due to be refilled such as fuel or animal feed • User friendly design requiring little effort to make purchases including stored banking details, minimal clicks and

“Favourites” lists • Dashboard with key data points, including purchasing history, price trackers, and account reminders

• Easy access to purchased product info like safety regulations, storage requirements and user manuals

CONDIMENTUM

Condimentum was born out of a desire to keep traditional English mustard and mint production at home. Now with their own state-of-the-art mill on site (only one of three in the world!), the group were looking for creative and economical ways to use by-products of mustard processing. After providing Scholars with relevant processing details, they set us to work exploring what was possible… From a pool of both high value and commodity options, the winning idea chosen by the Condimentum team was a mustard flavoured cocktail mix made from the oils left in the seed husk!

Introduction to Condimentum and their Business Hack

Tilhill is delighted to be supporting The Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust

Tilhill is the UK’s leading woodland creation, forest management, timber harvesting, and landscaping company. Tilhill is part of the BSW Group, the largest integrated forestry business in the UK, and a member of binderholz, Europe’s leading timber processing operation. BSW Group is a rapidly developing multi-site business with a turnover in excess of £650m and operations spanning forestry, sawmilling, timber manufacturing and energy.

Tilhill has, over the last 70+ years, planted more than 1 billion trees and, as a private company, has the greatest number of professionally qualified managers. We specialise in woodland creation and management, timber harvesting and buying, and landscaping. We strive at all times to provide an unrivalled service to our clients and customers.

People are our greatest asset and we take growing our people as seriously as we grow our trees. We offer an industry-leading graduate programme that provides a visible structure to aid and reward success. We look for employees with drive, enthusiasm, and passion to join us. A graduate has the opportunity to learn every facet of a business stream. They shadow colleagues who involve them in every aspect of their work, enabling our graduate employees to build up their knowledge. We also offer mentoring, pairing each graduate with a company manager for the duration of their training period.

It is a very exciting time to join the forest industry, with woodland creation playing an increasingly important role in climate change mitigation. Our years of experience in planting trees and creating woodlands and forests, coupled with our new business venture, CarbonStore, make Tilhill a cuttingedge company, playing a significant role in the climate change aspirations. Tilhill is a superb company to work for with a wide variety of roles across the UK on offer.