Meet the team

Tim Shuldham Director & Company Secretary

Tim studied Rural Estate Management at Cirencester prior to working as a land agent and agricultural valuer with Henry Spencer & Sons in Retford, Nottinghamshire leaving as an Associate Director two years after the company was taken over by a Building Society. In 1989 he established his own firm of Auctioneers, Valuers, Land & Estate Agents in Retford. As Senior Partner of the firm Tim provides advice to farming and landowning clients on all aspects of agricultural and rural property throughout the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. He is particularly involved in estate management which includes financial management of clients’ business affairs and the maintenance of the accounts including presentation to clients’ auditors. Tim also oversees the day-to-day management of his own firm’s affairs and is fully responsible for the financial management of the business. Other roles include being a Director of both a farming company and a property company and also holds several Trustee appointments including two for local charities. Although not acting in this capacity within CRL Tim is a fellow of both the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers and has undertaken several official roles within both organisations. Within CRL Tim is responsible for business administration and finance as well as land use issues and EU grants and subsidies associated with growing SRC.

Fred Walter Director

Fred’s family have farmed in Nottinghamshire for the past 90 years with their current farming activities covering an area of 1,200ha, primarily arable (cereals, potatoes, sugar beet and SRC) but also with 600 sheep on reclaimed sand and gravel land. Fred has worked on the farm since leaving school and now manages it alongside his father and brother. He also carries out grain storage and processing and land restoration work. Fred first established SRC on his farm in 1996, one of the first commercial plantations in the UK. He also assisted in the establishment and management of 700ha of the SRC grown for the Arbre power plant in North Yorkshire. As part of this work he developed specialist equipment to improve crop establishment including inter-row sprayers, cultivators and cutback machinery. With Chris Mell he worked on the Swedish bundler, during its first and only period of harvesting in the UK, to try and improve it for use with UK coppice. This experience encouraged Fred and Chris to develop the UK’s first dedicated small-scale SRC harvester which in turn led them to design and build the CRL chipper harvester, the second generation of which is now used regularly by CRL. With CRL Fred provides contract services and consultancy to SRC growers and has been involved in a number of research contracts funded by the DTI relating to SRC agronomy and machinery development. He has also been involved, by either contracting or providing advice and management, with up to 80% of the UK’s current commercial SRC plantations. Fred has 10 year’s practical experience of planting, managing and harvesting commercial SRC and also developing markets for its energy end-use.

Chris Mell Director

Chris studied Agricultural Engineering before joining the family livestock farming business in Nottinghamshire. Due to his interest in engineering Chris developed this side of the business concentrating initially on agricultural machinery but then expanding into heavy plant fabrication and repairs and then into the onshore oil industry. With the latter he has worked for both small contractors and the largest oil companies including BP, Shell and Amoco. Chris has also been involved with the supply and servicing of gas engine driven pumps and generators, utilising the waste gas from on-site processing, which led to his interest in alternative energy supply. Working with Fred Walter in the 1990s he started to work on specialist SRC equipment, both modifying and improving the efficiency of existing equipment whilst also developing and building new dedicated machinery aimed at simplifying establishment operations and increasing overall productivity. With R&D funding from the DTI, Chris and CRL developed the UK’s first dedicated small-scale SRC header in the late 90s and since then he has been responsible for the design, construction and ongoing development of the CRL large-scale direct chipper harvesters, now being built for export. Chris continues to design and upgrade CRL’s range of SRC equipment and also ensures that it is in good working order ready for each season’s work.

Following three years postgraduate research, Barbara worked as a Biologist within the Water Industry in the South West region and then in Yorkshire for over ten years, covering all aspects of aquatic biology related to river water quality, potable and wastewater treatment and wetland treatment systems. Whilst with Yorkshire Water (YW) she began research in 1992 on the use of SRC as an outlet for the application of treated sewage sludge and also its potential use as a commercial energy crop. Following these successful trials, in 1995 she began recruiting farmers to grow the UK's first commercial scale SRC for energy. Barbara was with Arbre Energy (owned by YW) from its inception and, as the Energy Crops Development Manager, was responsible for recruiting, establishing and managing 1,250ha (90% of the SRC required) for the Arbre plant, 85% of the UK's commercial SRC crop at that time. She has extensive experience in all aspects of SRC agronomy, management and harvesting, has lead a number of Government and industry funded research projects into various aspects of the crop and also wrote the LANTRA training guidelines for SRC. Following Arbre, Barbara worked for ADAS on further R&D pro jects related to SRC, wrote the Best Practice Guidelines for Growing SRC on behalf of Defra and also wrote feasibility studies for utilities, power generators, local authorities, etc related to the use of biomass energy, biofuels and energy crops.

Barbara is a Chartered Biologist and Member of the Institute of Biology.

William Lee

Contracts Manager

Will’s farming experience began on the family livestock farm in Nottinghamshire followed by the study of agriculture at Riseholme Agricultural College.  This led him to working for ten years on a 500ha estate in Buckinghamshire where he dealt with all aspects of arable production covering a range of crops plus dealing with livestock.  Following this Will had a few years working for Amazone UK dealing with the sale of farm machinery across the south east of England.  Will then moved back up to Nottinghamshire to develop his own farming business and worked part time for three years with CRL primarily involved with planting and harvesting SRC.Will has now joined CRL full time to manage the contractual and operational aspects of planting and harvesting energy crops.

Julie Shuldham Administration

Julie manages the financial accounts on behalf of CRL and also deals with much of the company’s administration.

Jamie Campion
SRC Harvesting  

Following training at agricultural college, Jamie has spent his life in agriculture working on a wide range of crops and also gaining experience in animal husbandry.  He runs his own small arable farm in Nottinghamshire based close to CRL’s main operational centre.  In 2002 Jamie diversified into some new areas of work within farming one of which was to specialise in the operation of the CRL SRC harvester on a part time basis. These years of hands-on, practical harvesting experience have now led to Jamie managing SRC harvesting across the UK on behalf of CRL.  He also provides operational feedback to Chris Mell and Fred Walter which has helped with the ongoing development of the CRL header and harvester and improvements in overall harvesting efficiency.