A day in the life of Trevor

Production Manager at South East Wood Fuels

By Trevor Kensett | 10th October 2018

A typical day means that I get up at sunrise, which may sound harsh to some people but I live in a very lovely corner of West Sussex and it is a treat to see the light fall across the beautiful fields. I tend to my herd of cows and feed Baby, our pet sheep, with her digestive biscuit before my mobile phone starts to ring. 

Around 7.30-8 I start to get calls from the hauliers, with delays, truck breakdowns or shifts to the booked deliveries. Our suppliers for arboriculture chip also start to call to let me know what they have; I then call Nicki in the office to let her know any arrangements that I have made and also to run through the deliveries for the day.

My first site visit today is to a woodland near Wadhurst to take a look at a wood stack, ‘ride side’. The wood is great quality and the right price. I make sure that the wood has all the right felling licences and it turns out the wood has FSC certification (Forest Stewardship Council). I arrange for haulage to take it to one of our hubs in East Sussex for processing into wood chip ready for shipping to a client. This was a trip worth taking as I got the wood for a reasonable price in this competitive market.

On the way back, I check up on some woodland which was coppiced a few years back – I want to check some fencing to make sure that it is still safe from the deer. There is a serious problem with over population of deer eating new growth, they can turn an area of woodland into a moonscape if left to graze unchecked. We like to see newly coppiced woodland fenced to keep them at bay.

A late lunch. I find a spot where there is a mobile phone signal, eat my sandwich in the SEWF truck, while making calls and catching up on emails.

In the afternoon, I make my way over to one of our hubs in West Sussex to oversee a chipping operation which is going on there. There is about 200 tonnes of forestry wood being chipped into our on-site stores. We check the chipped batches for quality; both size of chip and moisture content. While I am on site, I also oversee the loading of 90m3 of forestry chip to go to a client near Petersfield, checking the lorry is swept out before filling, the lorry is full to capacity and all the paperwork is complete and correct.

I make my way home from our West Sussex hub – the sun is setting and it has been a long day. I make a few calls for the next day; feed Baby, the sheep, her afternoon biscuit and call it a day.

Trevor Kensett

Wood Fuel Operations Manager

Trevor runs the Wood Fuel Supply and day to day Operations side of the business. His key task is ensuring that clients have adequate supplies of quality fuel at the right price. This ranges from FSC woods management sources to arb supplies suitable for larger boilers.

Meet Trevor