Meet Mike Jupp, our Commercial Director. In this meet the team blog series, you can find out more about our team, their roles and a what a typical working day looks like.

I’m normally in the office at about 7:45am and so my day tends to start early – around 6am. I’ve made a resolution to be more active as once I’m in the office I don’t get much of a chance to do any exercise. So at least once a week I’ll head to the gym for a circuit session on the way in. But most days, it’s a more gentle start; I’ll get up, make the tea, let the dogs outside and prepare their breakfast. Whilst home isn’t that far from the office, it takes about an hour to drive in so I’ll leave the house before 7am. It’s a busy part of the world and so I enjoy listening to the radio as it gives me something else to think about that’s not the traffic! It’s actually quite good to have some time to myself in the car as it gives me a chance to get my thoughts together for the day ahead and – on the way home – to mentally leave things behind or make some calls.

As the Commercial Director at Woodhorn I work closely with the teams across all of our departments. The first conversations in the morning are something I value, whether its discussing what the team got up to last night, what everyone watched on TV or what they ate for dinner. It gives us a chance to chat before the phones start ringing and the craziness of the day begins.

An industry of early starters

Across our certified soils, waste management and farming teams, we work with companies and individuals that typically start early. It’s not unusual to find a batch of emails or orders in my inbox even before I’ve left the house in the morning. Therefore, once the computer goes on, we’re hard at it, certainly for the first couple of hours of the day at least. Whilst I oversee the commercial side of things, I’ve been with the company more than a decade and so I know a lot of our customers extremely well. I like maintaining contact with them and have recently moved back to sit in the sales office because I still love the buzz. As a consequence, the short to-do list I start the day with tends to grow as I enjoy picking up the odd opportunity or deal myself.

I report to our Managing Director, Cameron, and because we’re a close-knit team, we regularly chat about various aspects of the business. Yes, there are the key times of the year such as the summer when we focus on developing new budgets for the coming financial year (which will end up being my targets!) and the winter when we look at bigger, strategic plans for growth and expansion; but we’ve developed a diverse business and so there’s always something to discuss regarding the day-to-day operations or opportunities.

A focus on soil and waste management

Whilst my background is in the horticultural sector, Cameron takes the lead on our farming activities, leaving me to manage certified soils and waste management. I work with our Materials Recycling Director, Morgan, on securing new waste contracts and have a sales team of three people who run soil sales including our retail brand Earth Cycle. Recently, however, a fair amount of my time has been dedicated to launching our milk vending operation. This takes milk from the farm and sells it direct to the public through some innovative vending machines. We opened our first location in Autumn 2023 and have big plans to expand this to other sites and sell more of our milk to restaurants and food producers locally. So having not been heavily involved in the dairy previously, it’s an area I’m getting to know well now.

I know a lot of people say that no two days are the same at work, but they’re really not here, especially because of the seasonality we encounter in each aspect of the business. For instance, our soil sales are non-stop from March to September with retail sales peaking around Easter or early summer, subject to the weather. Our green waste, however, tends to be offset to that and is busier from summer into the early winter. The farm is of course dictated by crops, harvest and calving but from a sales perspective can be quite busy over the autumn and winter as we sell our calves, crops and grains to various customers and merchants. Oh, and there’s always thousands of litres of milk to collect and sell every day too! So not only are no two days the same, what I am doing on those days will be dictated by the part of the business currently most in demand.

Establishing a B2C brand

As far as challenges go, growing the Earth Cycle brand is probably the one aspect of my job that has brought the most over the years. The majority of our work is about bulk, business to business transactions. Setting Earth Cycle up as a consumer facing brand with ecommerce and all that entails presented some interesting tests to the business model and our normal mode of operation. By and large we have overcome them and today, Earth Cycle is a highly successful part of our business and I anticipate that it will continue grow into a big enterprise of its own. I’ve enjoyed being part of that journey and helping it establish and flourish.

Having spent a lot of my previous career outside and selling, I still enjoy getting out and about. I’m based at head office but frequently visit our compost production sites in either Tangmere or Fawley. I also like to go and meet customers, do site visits, and catch up with some of our suppliers. Thankfully I’ve got a great team at the office, so I know that everything will be looked after, whilst I’m away.

Without my team I don’t think we’d have built the customer base we have. Our customers trust us as their supplier because they know the people they’re working with and they can rely on us. Working alongside these guys and being in a rural location are probably the things I love most about my job. Whilst the drive from home can be tortuous, once I arrive at work and take in the peace and quiet and the views and catch up with the team it all becomes worthwhile.   

Reviewing the day

Towards the end of each day, the team will come together to review the day’s sales, look at tomorrow and the remainder of the week and month. We analyse and track our performance against budget constantly and will share thoughts and ideas as to how we can correct the numbers or manage supply and demand to try and even out production. As noted, I start the day with a small, focused to-do list and this is the point where I prep that and look at what the following day will bring in terms of meetings, calls and visits. We end the day as a team much as we started it, having a friendly chat about any evening’s plans.

I’ll go home via the gym a couple of times a week to maintain my resolution to be more active and help break the journey and avoid the peak traffic. I also DJ occasionally so from time to time, I’m heading to go and do that. It’s busier around Christmas as I work in several venues across the festive period, but during the remainder of the year, Fridays and Saturdays are when I’m typically spinning the decks! It’s very different to the day job and I love listening to music and watching others enjoy it. As a family we have property in Spain and so my other relaxation includes holidays or long weekends there. It’s great to have a bolthole in the sun, especially during the autumn and winter; it always helps me recharge the batteries, ready for the next big push or project at work.