60 second inteview: Matthias Luethi

How did you get into engineering? My background is actually in farming. 25 years ago, I was the first farmer in the UK to grow maize for grain. There was no suitable machinery available in the UK at the time so I altered the header of a combine harvester so it could to harvest maize instead of wheat. I was also the first farmer in the UK to supply prepared salads, and the first commercial grower in the UK of rocket. Our customers included all the leading hotels in London including the Ritz and the Dorchester as well as the House of Commons. It is important that the leaves of rocket are not crushed when being washed, so we had to devise our own washing machine. I also set up an agricultural contractor business so I had to learn how to make repairs and modifications. How did you learn to be an engineer? I was not trained as an engineer. I taught myself. I have always been pottering around. How did you get into making wind turbines? I saw an advertising sign spinning round on a garage forecourt and decided I could use the idea to create something really useful. How did you develop your current designs from that? I knew nothing at all to begin with. I built prototypes. I had an engineer who made me things. Sometimes I had to go back to scratch and start again. In order to improve the machine's performance, and get the shape of the blades right to work at low as well as high wind speeds I built my own wind tunnel in a garage. The wind tunnel at the University of Greenwich was too small and large, commercially available wind tunnels were too expensive to hire. The Kent Inventors Forum, which meets on the first Wednesday every month at the University of Greenwich helped quite a bit too, especially when it came to integrating dynamos with the wind turbines. Since you were a successful farmer, why did you want to do anything in engineering? It excites me, particularly when I do something new. I cannot sit still. I get bored very easily. How did you come to set up business in England? I had a large dairy farm in Switzerland. But one day, the Swiss government took away one third of my quota overnight. I had a group of agricultural students from England working on my farm and was impressed by their enterprise and enthusiasm, so I sold out and bought a farm in Kent between Tenterden and Rye. How do you see the future of your business and engineering in general? I have sent several wind turbines down to Africa now. Charities want to build wind turbines made to my designs in Africa to charge batteries, power water pumps and enable modern communications. If I can make life better for other people, then I feel I have achieved my goal in life. Since you are self-taught, what do you think of students who go to study engineering? I would have saved myself a lot of money and time if I had been educated as an engineer. It sometimes takes me years to solve problems and find the right components to fulfil a particular function – things which a trained engineer should be able to do easily. I would recommend everyone to study engineering, as long as they do not allow a formal education to prevent them thinking outside the box.