Liz Russell interview January 2010
Superbug Lady on a Mission
Crawford Mack meets a farmer's daughter that's now internationally acclaimed as a leading entrepreneur and innovator of organic farming solutions.
Born and bred in Barnacre near Garstang, 52-year-old Liz Russell is managing director of Barton-based EnviroSystems. And having been brought up on a remote farm in the region, her story that leads to her reputation within the farming industry as the 'Bug Lady' is a fascinating journey.
As a farmer's daughter she certainly knows her onions about the industry and it's an environment that looking back, taught her one of her first big lessons. "In my experience people who come from a farming background really know how to graft, because they have to work very hard and very long hours to succeed. They also need a highly disciplined and organised approach as well as being able to think on their feet and expect the unexpected."
That lesson stood her well as she progressed through college with a business diploma into an office job. But it just wasn't 'doing it' for Liz, so with a friend she set up an evening potato round. Before long she was making more money delivering half hundredweight (56lbs) bags of potatoes to householders across two nights per week, than she made in her 'day' job. "And the big one was the chip shop account," she laughed.
It was the first outlet for her entrepreneurial spirit that lay dormant for some 20 years as she originally followed a successful career in key account retail sales before being headhunted by an animal feed company. "It was almost like going back to my roots having come from farming. Not only that, but because I really believed in what I was selling, it was not difficult to sell."
And she also learned another key lesson in life. "I discovered that as an 'employee' the best thing to do was to learn as much as I could, so even if my employer took my job away, they could not take away the knowledge that I had built up. So I would encourage anyone that wants to progress, to learn something new in their job everyday," she added.
Then aged 39 with two children, came a defining moment in her life which released her entrepreneurial spirit, as she explained: "I gave up my job to start providing animal nutrition advice and products to farmers. I understood their issue on milk yield and I was able to demonstrate the improvement that diet and effective nutrition could make. Because of the values of that community, they recognised my positive attitude and gave me marvellous support as I built my business, farm by farm." The business, Greenlands Nutrition after the name of her house, grew significantly but came to a shuddering stop with the onset of the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001.
By that time Liz had moved into the 'bug world' by creating a silage inoculant called Optimize that used freeze-dried bacteria and enzymes to enhance the quality and preservation of silage.
It was this approach of providing practical solutions to farming problems that drove her in conjunction with a business partner, to explore the market for cow bedding. The most used bedding was straw or sawdust that through a combination of weather and market conditions was not dependable on price or quality. And poor bedding led to mastitis-causing bacteria and infected animals.
So from the original concept she discovered that paper sludge which was going to landfill, when dried was five times more absorbent than sawdust or shavings and 10 times more absorbent than straw. Moreover, as well as being more consistently dry than other animal bedding materials, it reduced cell count and mastitis leading to healthier and more productive animals.
EnviroBed as it is known, is an industry success story and in just five years since its launch, EnviroSystems was given a Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation of which Liz is justifiably proud. Upon meeting the Queen, Liz had the pleasure of discussing the development and progression of EnviroBed and was particularly impressed with Her Majesty's extensive knowledge of the farming industry.
Since then the business has gone from strength to strength and Liz now supplies farms all over the UK and Ireland and in Europe via a distributor in Holland.
In the same vein of finding environmentally friendly solutions, Liz has developed Slurry Bugs that fixes nitrogen levels in slurry thus cutting CO2. The inoculant also improves in slurry handling and storage.
More recently she has introduced BactaHealth which is a range of probiotic bacterial cleaners that are being used for milking parlours, pig pens and chicken sheds.
She explained: "Aggressive chemical disinfectants and antibiotics kill all bacteria good and bad, and within an hour the area is re-populated often with the disease causing bacterium. Probiotic cleaning products on the other hand, use natural probiotic bacteria and these friendly bacteria then populate and dominate the environment. It's just the same sort of thing that Yakult does for your own body."
The results have been simply outstanding and beyond the company's wildest expectations. "It's just nature's magic", explained Liz. "Nature always has the solutions and my goal is to communicate these solutions."
And it's using the same consuming passion that she is now aligned herself and BactaHealth to a health service body which is investigating 'smart solutions' for MRSA and C.Diff. "I truly believe that the human race deserves this solution and what we have achieved with BactaHealth, could make massive inroads to the superbug problem which costs lives and money."
Liz Russell is one superbug lady on a mission and don't be surprised if one day she achieves as much for the health service as she has done for the world of farming.
EnviroSystems Limited
Pasture View
Barton Cross Park
Barton
Preston PR3 5AX
01772 860085
liz@envirosystems.co.uk
www.envirosystems.co.uk
