Westpark Shannon - Sunday Business Post

Westpark, the ambitious p r i v a t e business park situat-

ed on the cusp of the Shannon Free Zone occupies a hilltop site. Its geographic elevation is appropriate: this visionary campus deserves to be looked up to.

Names like Building 3000 and Building 4000 allude to its strong futuristic creden-tials. The buildings are ter-raced to include generous outside spaces, while inside breakout and relax stations run the length of the spine of each floor, all smart and com-fortably furnished and com-plemented by art on the walls.

Nothing has been left to chance in these meticulous-ly future-proofed buildings. Every tiny detail inside and outside has been microscop-ically considered.

And such thoughtfulness is not just confined to the fit-tings and fixtures – even the food in the restaurant is local-ly sourced and of fine-dining quality.

Outdoors, the private cam-pus has landscaped grounds, which will only improve with time as the planted orchards and trees reach maturity. There is a pond with seating, a herb garden and framed views over the Shannon Estuary.

Jogging and walking tracks are laid out around the perim-eter of the campus for workers who want to partake in lunch-time or after-work exercise and of course, showers and changing facilities.

It’s not surprising given the environment that has been created here that despite the recession, Westpark has at-tracted an array of enterprises from start-ups to established multinational businesses.

It is home to a burgeoning cluster of international avia-tion services together with a growing number of financial services firms, ICT and semi state bodies.

Westpark companiesPolished company name-plates attest to this. Listed among them are GE/GECAS, SES, DHL, AerCap, Lufthansa Technik, Enterprise Ireland, Genworth and the Australian bank Pepper.

Westpark’s founder and developer Brian O’Connell is well-known in the region as a man of vision, and Westpark is the proof.

When others were talking about improving road infra-structure a decade ago, O’Con-nell echoed their sentiments, but also mooted big-picture ideas like a bridge to link the port of Foynes to Shannon.

He was also instrumental in advancing the region as a founder of the Atlantic Way in 2005, a voluntary initia-tive to foster co-operation between business, education, government and community groups in the western region. The aim being to accelerate and maximise economic and social development.

“This region has great po-tential as a centre of excellence for living, life, leisure, work and knowledge,” he said.

In his view, “the Shannon region remains attractive as a low-cost, high-contribution centre, particularly for US companies seeking a presence

in Europe”.Taking the long-term view,

O’Connell wisely undertook the installation of the best pos-sible ICT infrastructure when building Westpark.

“Our ICT is fully integrated and resilient, with direct glob-al connectivity. We also have a dedicated data centre on site, where we can provide co-lo-cation space for our custom-ers to host their servers. This provides significant savings because what we are offering is a specialist environment.

Digital divideIn developing Westpark, O’Connell undertook a com-mitment to eliminate the dig-ital divide between the Shan-non area and the east of the country.

An investment of over €1.2 million in telecoms infrastruc-ture has delivered to Westpark customers the same level of service they would enjoy if they were located in Dublin.

“We are future-proofed,” said O’Connell. “The ducting throughout the site can ac-commodate whatever band-width or latency is required.”

Asked to describe Westpark today, he said, “Right now, Westpark is a community of over 1,500 people working across 45 companies varying in scale, size and sector.”

Client companies are in-volved in sectors and activities as varied as aviation, finance, logistics, ICT, and general ser-vices.

“We are home to a num-ber of corporate headquar-ters, SMEs and start-up com-panies and we are a proper community. The buildings are designed to be conducive to networking and we have an evolving situation where many of our clients are also clients of one another.

“We organise networking meetings three or four times a year and they are of immense benefit. We encourage the interaction between compa-nies and at these networking events our client companies

share leads, ideas and they discuss challenges.”

With a solid cluster of avia-tion sector businesses located here, strong synergies exist. “We are fortunate enough to have two of the largest avia-tion leasing companies in the world in Gecas and AerCap here, together with Lufthan-sa Technik, CAE Parc Avia-tion, Part M and others,” said O’Connell.

Aviation sectorThere is massive growth in the aviation sector forecast over the next ten to 20 years. The economic surge in China, with its growing middle class,

as well as emerging markets elsewhere, are factors under-pinning this projection for hugely increased demand for air travel in the near future.

As O’Connell added, “we can confidently expect our Westpark-based aviation businesses to grow accord-ingly”.

They are certainly punching above their weight already. “Of the 20,000 large commercial jet aircraft flying in the world at this moment, 8,000 are leased and 3,000 of those are managed through companies based here at Westpark.”

Those statistics prove that a business park located on the periphery of Europe can be

at the heart of global aviation.“What we have provided

here at Westpark is a high-class facility with a five-star quality service. We offer extensive conference and meeting facilities and this has proved to be a big attraction, so too our Global Business Cen-tre, which is very successful.

“Within it are turnkey spac-es that can be easily recon-figured to suit a start-up or growing business.

“We can have a serviced office ready to move into the next day.”

Clients that rent a space know they can quickly up-scale. Locating at Westpark gives them the agility to move

into bigger spaces. Aircraft leasing business

Genesis is a case in point. It up-scaled on three occasions until its eventual multi-mil-lion euro merger with Aer-Cap, which also operates out of Westpark.

“Our clients attract the best employees because of the fa-cilities and services on-hand,” said O’Connell. He knows this to be true because his clients tell him so.

Pioneering developerAs a pioneering developer within the region, a co-found-

er of the Atlantic Way and a former chairman of the Shannon Airport Authority, it’s obvious that regional de-velopment really matters to Brian O’Connell.

With much change in the air in recent years, he wel-comes the launch of the new Shannon Group, with its four component companies.

“Ultimately, we need to work together as a region to make sure we benefit from the recovery in the Irish economy, that’s what’s important,” he said.

His vision is focused on size and scale. He knows that the ultimate success of Westpark is tied into the achievement of a more successful Shannon region.

“I have always been com-mitted to collaboration and co-operation in order to drive success,” said O’Connell.

“I believe there is tremen-dous opportunity for this region. I have made a very substantial investment in Westpark and will continue to do so, because I believe in the region.”

“With the campus, we look into the future positively, with both the possibility and plan-ning permission to grow quite substantially.

“We are shovel-ready for three more buildings and are in the position to house any multinational that requires a new headquarters in Shannon tomorrow or next year,” said O’Connell.

O’Connell and his team are currently working with architects to see how best to re-model those planned buildings, value engineer them and make them more energy efficient for the future.

“We have a high level of in-volvement to optimise shell and core space and what goes within it,” he said.

“We are exceptional in the industry in that we are the developers, project managers and we can also be the con-tractors and facility managers. It’s a unique aggregation of experience in both the design and running of a business”.

Phase twoO’Connell said phase two of Westpark would be about a composite offering.

“My brief to the architects is centred around ‘the family’ from the point of arrival in the morning to departure, ease of access to the campus, park-ing, facilities, food hall, shops, creche, gym and associated facilities, thus providing all of the services that the working family would require,” he said.

“It will make it easier for our clients to recruit people to come and work here. As the campus develops and the community expands there will be on-going integration of all of the ancillary services.”

These designs are currently being worked on and will be available in the New Year, and as to be expected, the attention to detail will be immediately apparent.

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 20146 Shannon 2014

Westpark developer plans ahead Brian O’Connell’s business campus on the edge of the Shannon Free Zone is designed for people, families and the future, writes Margaret O’Brien

Shannon ships out science

DHL Global For-warding, the air, ocean and road freight specialist within Deutsche

Post DHL selected Westpark as its base in the region – and the company continues to go from strength to strength.

In recent years, DHL Global Forwarding has expanded its traditional freight forwarding activities and has developed a whole host of value added services – including a global service centre in Westpark supporting regional and global MNC customers.

More than 40 people are now dedicated to service centre activities and the Irish business unit is recognised as a centre of excellence in the DHL global organisation due to its ongoing success in de-ploying bespoke solutions and processes.

“We set-up our service cen-tre activities with a small team supporting a relatively simple supply chain for our first cus-tomer,” said Maurice Meade, managing director, DHL Glob-al Forwarding Ireland.

“Today, we are working with regional and global mul-tinationals, supporting very complex supply chains and meanwhile we still provide straight forward global visi-bility and in-transit reporting for some customers.

“Our services are now more sophisticated and often in-volve compliance and regu-latory reporting, management and information services and consultancy,” he said.

DHL Global Forwarding has

also expanded its service of-fering for the life sciences and healthcare industry in Ireland and has recently added the Shannon (Westpark) branch to the company’s worldwide DHL Thermonet network of

life sciences certified stations. The DHL team is fully

trained and accredited to provide DHL’s life scienc-es and healthcare customer base with specialist tempera-ture-controlled airfreight, in-cluding dry ice replenishing and active and non-active container handling, ensuring product quality at all times.

“Our customers in the life sciences and healthcare sector are looking for better ways to manage the risk of product damage and loss from tem-perature deviations in their supply chain,” said Meade.

“DHL Thermonet tackles these requirements and of-fers Irish based shippers and consignees access to a con-sistently reliable end-to-end cold chain.”

DHL Global Forwarding continues to evolve and di-versify to meet the needs of its customers and its flexibil-ity and innovative approach was recently acknowledged when the company scooped two top industry awards at the 2014 Irish Transport and Logistics awards (organised by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) .

DHL Global Forwarding was acknowledged as Freight Forwarding Company of the Year and also received Overall Logistics and Transport Excel-lence award 2014.

With over 60 people in its West-park Shan-non office,

AerCap, the global leader in aircraft leasing, provides com-prehensive fleet solutions for more than 200 airline cus-tomers in 90 countries.

The team in Westpark largely specialises in finance, treasury, insurance, compa-ny secretarial and third-par-ty services, while its Dublin office handles the sales and marketing, technical, con-tracts management and le-gal divisions of the company. The company also has offices around the world, including Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Sin-gapore and Shanghai.

AerCap, a NYSE-quoted company, has total assets of $44 billion and equity of $7.6 billion. As a result of the acquisition of ILFC earlier in the year, AerCap is now one of the two premier global aircraft leasing companies in the world. Restructuring and integration following the ac-quisition is going well.

AerCap has 1,300 owned and managed aircraft in its current fleet, and an attractive portfolio of 400 fuel-efficient aircraft on order.

A total of 85 per cent of its

current fleet consists of the most widely used aircraft in the world – the Airbus A320, and A330, Boeing B737NG and the B777 family. AerCap also has the largest order of B787s in the world, is the larg-est lessor order of A320neos, has a very large order for the A350XWB and is the first les-sor offering Embraer E-Jets E2.

The company also offers part-out and engine leasing services through its subsid-iary AeroTurbine which is headquartered in Florida, and is one of the largest global providers of aircraft engines, airframes and components.

The AerCap customer list is a who’s who of interna-tional aviation, including Air France, Aer Lingus, American Airlines, British Airways, Ca-thay Pacific, China Southern, Emirates, Etihad, Virgin At-lantic and Qatar Airways.

Tom Kelly is chief executive of AerCap Ireland Ltd, with many years experience at the top level of aircraft leasing and financial services in AerCap and previously in GECAS.

“As a global leader in avi-ation, AerCap is very well positioned to take advantage of continuing levels of air traf-fic growth around the world which is the primary driver of aircraft demand,” he said.

Our clients attract the best employees because of the facilities and services on hand

Maurice Meade, managing director, DHL Global Forwarding

World’s top air lessor has office in Westpark with 60 employees

Brian O’Connell, founder and developer of Westpark Press 22

Tom Kelly, chief executive of AerCap Ireland

Westpark’s tenant companiesAerCap Ireland LimitedAero Inspection InternationalAerofuels Overseas LimitedAldus Aviation LimitedArista Networks LimitedB2B Gateway LimitedBrian O’Connell LimitedBridge AviationBuffalo TechnologyCAE Parc AviationCanyon Corporate and Trust Solutions LimitedConversion Consulting LimitedDe Dietrich Process Systems Limited

DHL Global ForwardingDHL EKASDaleraven LimitedElsevier Ireland Services LimitedEnterprise IrelandGE Capital Aviation Services Limited GenworthGlobal ID LimitedGlobal Business InstituteKraus & Naimer LimitedLinkResQ Limited/ Work Area Recovery Solutions Lufthansa TechnikNational Employment Rights Authority

Part MPharmaConex LimitedPepper Asset Servicing Piercom LimitedProlimax LimitedSeko LogisticsShannon Engine Support LimitedShoes for Crews (Europe) LimitedSpirit AeroSystems (Ireland) Symantec SoftwareUlearning SkillnetWestpark Shannon LimitedWSL Management Company Limited

By Caroline allen

Financial ser-vices firm Genworth has become the latest multi-national to in-vest in Shan-non, with the

opening of a €15 million busi-ness centre supporting three million customers around the world.

Employing 400 people, the new facility had its official opening last Monday, attended by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

“The base in Shannon, the largest concentration of Gen-worth financial staff outside the US, is crucial in supporting our expanding base of inter-national clients across Europe and our growing presence in new markets in Latin America and China,” said Bob Bran-nock, president of interna-tional protection, Genworth.

Genworth LPI sells lifestyle protection insurance products and services globally.

Headquartered in London and operational in Europe, Latin America and the Asia Pacific, it manages $800 mil-lion in revenues and US$2 bil-lion in assets.

Genworth was part of GE until its IPO in 2004. Its parent company is now a Fortune 500 insurance holding company, headquartered in the US.

“This new development gives us the capacity to meet growing business needs. It is the centre for our technol-ogy, product development,

finance, compliance, opera-tions and human resources teams,” said Brannock.

When Genworth started up in Shannon 1997 with 45 em-ployees it was a small British

organisation facing a shortage of the kind of technical skills it needed.

Brannock was confident that he could fill the skills gap in Shannon, having gained

extensive experience with GPA, and decided to replicate a similar model by opening up a centre of excellence in Shannon.

“As well as having first-class

international transport and telecommunications links, Shannon has consistently pro-vided Genworth with a pool of highly talented employees,” he said.

“We have a new population of graduate emigrants who left Ireland, gained experience and now want to return. We continue to have excellent col-leges, developing a graduate

workforce ready to work.”As a region, Brannock

believes Shannon deserves government support and in-vestment.

“We have quality housing

at a fraction of the prices in Dublin and a quality of life that we take for granted, but others would cherish,” he said.

“We have an airport which, under the leadership of Rose Hynes, is finally starting to do what it says on the tin, pro-viding access to our markets.

“It is a great region that has the potential to grow and thrive. However, this cannot happen in isolation. It needs a government committed to regional development, a development agency with a clear enterprise plan, ed-ucators aligned to the needs of business and partners like the Chamber of Commerce and Shannon Group, but most importantly, businesses brave enough to make the invest-ment to make it happen.”

Shannon TheSundayBusiness PostNovember 30, 2014 businesspost.ie

Financial services multinational opens €15m business centre

EDITED BY elaine O'Regan

Scaling new heights a fresh chapter for airport and aviation hub page 2

innovation pays off: Chamber head drives regional business page 4

Shannon Group spearheading a regional revivalBy Margaret o’Brien

As chief execu-tive of Shannon Group, Scottish man Neil Pakey has been tasked

with the revival of Shannon Airport and the surrounding region.

Although the group didn’t become a legal entity until September 2014, Pakey took on the role of chief executive designate in June 2013, just months after Shannon Airport separated from the Dublin Airport Authority.

Pakey has a solid track re-cord in the aviation sector, stretching back 30 years.

He is credited with changing the name of Speke Airport to Liverpool John Lennon Air-port, using the slogan “above us only sky”, from the song Imagine, thus playing a major role in the airport’s commer-cial turnaround.

When Pakey joined Speke as managing director in 2002, passenger numbers were running at about 700,000 annually. By the time he left in 2010, this figure had risen to 5.5 million.

As managing director of Liverpool John Lennon Air-port, Pakey was also an ap-pointee of the Peel Group, with a broader remit to oversee the group’s property portfolio and lead Peel Airport in transition-ing Doncaster Airport to RAF Finningley.

Business supportThe breadth of his remit at Peel Holdings makes Pakey a good fit for the lead role at Shan-non Group plc, a new com-mercial semi-state company that comprises four separate units, namely Shannon Air-port, Shannon Heritage, the International Aviation Ser-vices Centre and Shannon Commercial Properties.

“From the start, I have been struck – and very pleasant-ly surprised by – the strong support from businesses, the community and local politi-

cians,” said Pakey. “That level of positive sup-

port reminds me of my time at Liverpool, and we achieved a lot on foot of that type of back-ing and tremendous loyalty.”

In his new role, Pakey is confident he can emulate his success with Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

“The heritage and history of Shannon Airport sets it apart as a true innovator. We need to tap into that resourcefulness and build on that brand prop-osition to return Shannon to former glories,” he said.

Shannon is revered inter-nationally as the birthplace of duty free shopping, the home of the free zone, and a catalyst for foreign direct investment. It’s also the place where the concept of aircraft leasing took flight.

“It is important to leverage that creative and pioneering DNA to help re-invigorate and move the airport and region forward,” said Pakey.

When he arrived almost 18 months ago, Pakey said he could sense that “heads were dropping”.

“My timing was good. I ar-rived on June 10, 2013, at the start of something positive. The Gathering was building momentum and it helped us start an upward curve in traffic numbers.

“We needed an initiative to give a push in the right direction and The Gathering, combined with the airport becoming independent, did that,” he said.

Pakey said Shannon had risen ahead of the economic trend in its first year, as evi-denced by increased weekend traffic, more connections to the US and a greater number of European destinations.

Airport trafficThe airport had throughput of 1.4 million passengers in 2013, up about 5,000 from 2012, but more importantly, it marked the first increase in five years.

Pakey said the airport was on target for double-digit percentage growth this year, “somewhere around the mid-teens”.

“The board’s five-year target is to deliver 2.5 million pas-sengers. New destinations from Shannon include eight Ryanair routes introduced in 2014, some of which are lim-ited to the summer schedule, but destinations like Berlin, Warsaw and Paris amongst others will continue operat-ing over the winter months,” he said.

to page 4

Taoiseach enda Kenny with Bob Brannock, president, international protection, genworth, and Tom Mcinerney, president and chief executive, genworth, formally opening genworth’s new €15 milllion business centre in Shannon Press 22

neil Pakey, chief executive, Shannon group

We continue to have excellent colleges, developing a graduate workforce ready to work

2014

It has been almost two years since Shannon Airport Authority (SAA) gained full independence, becom-ing a publicly-owned commercial semi-state company.

By that time, the numbers passing through the airport, once a vibrant magnet for business and tourism in the midwest, had dropped off significantly.

The freedom afforded by the airport’s independence allowed Shannon to turn a corner, striking its own deals with airlines including Ryanair, which launched routes to new destinations, including Alicante, by the spring of 2013.

Other new or expanded services to Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Glasgow, Faro, Palma and Malaga, were announced across a range of carriers.

Positive turnaround

The airport handled 1.4 million pas-sengers last year, and 24,000 aircraft movements. Terminal traffic, compris-ing passengers that begin or end their journey at Shannon, rose by three per cent in 2012 to total close to 1.3 million.

Transatlantic traffic increased by 18 per cent to just under 340,000 passen-gers, as carriers increased capacity and new routes were added to Chicago and Philadelphia.

The upward trajectory has continued this year. “The airport’s strong momen-tum across 2014 has continued into the final month of the Autumn, with pas-senger numbers for October, the most recent figures to hand, showing a 28 per cent increase on the same period twelve months ago,” said Andrew Murphy, chief commercial officer with Shannon Air-port.

“The biggest gains in passenger num-bers through the terminal were again on European services, with eight continental services among the nine attractive new routes launched for the summer season – April through to end of October”.

Passenger throughput

Taking the tough shoulder month of October as an example, Murphy said: “we enjoyed a 111 per cent increase (from 20,347 to 42,950) in passenger numbers to and from the continent last month compared to October 2013”.

Transatlantic passenger traffic was up by 15 per cent (from 23,511 to 27,108) for the same period, due to the increased frequency across New York and Boston services this year, with Shannon’s biggest market, the UK, up by six per cent in October (from 61,681 to 65,243).

With just a month to go until the end of the year, and the busy Christmas period to look forward to, Murphy is confident that Shannon will record double-digit growth for 2014.

“It will still be strong growth some-where in the early to mid teens, which is a significant and positive development.”

He confirmed that Shannon Airport had the summer season shored up, due in part to the success of the Wild Atlan-tic Way, an initiative that has resonated strongly and ignited the imagination of inbound tourists.

There had been gains across the air-port’s three main markets, Europe, Britain and US, he said.

“Increases in European services are particularly strong thanks to the nine new services this summer season, but the US also performed ahead of expected on the

back of greater frequencies”.The strength of the Sterling sent British

passengers in Shannon’s direction. “The UK is the strongest market for Ireland and a six percentage growth month-over-month is quite significant,” said Murphy.

Continued growthWith six new services launching this

winter, Murphy is confident that traffic to and from Shannon Airport will con-tinue to grow.

“Some of the new winter services, such as Berlin, Fuerteventura, Krakow, Paris and Warsaw, together with our other winter services, provide a really strong array of destinations for weekend or win-ter sun breaks as well as for business

travellers,” he said.“It’s good news also for the region, as

our winter schedule this year has really good options from an inbound perspec-tive, which will be good for the domestic tourism sector”.

Murphy said further services would be launched next year. “Our transatlantic of-fering is now much more comprehensive than it has been for years and we expect that to continue for 2015,” he said.

Aer Lingus operates a daily service to Boston year round and six daily services per week to New York (JFK) across ten and a half months of the year.

Delta offers daily flights from May to October into New York while United op-erate a year round daily service to Newark and a daily service into Chicago, which

is a leading hub, from May – October. American Airlines fly to Philadelphia,

one of their most significant hubs, from May to October.

Next year marks the 70th anniversary of commercial transatlantic flights into Shannon.

The first carrier, American Overseas Airlines (AOA, now American Airlines), made a scheduled flight from the US to Shannon on October 24, 1945, when a DC4 aircraft “Flagship London” flew from Gander to Shannon in 8 hours 20 minutes.

It was a flight of such significance that broadcasts were made from the aircraft while en route, which were relayed over a nationwide radio network in the US.

Within weeks, Shannon began re-ceiving scheduled aircraft from Trans

World Airways (TWA) and Pan American Airways (Pan AM). Murphy confirmed that plans were in place to celebrate the event in 2015.

Cargo trafficAside from passengers, the other key

service airline offered by Shannon Air-port is cargo, an area of business Murphy and his team hope to build on.

“Currently, DHL and Fedex run daily overnight services to hubs in Paris and Cologne. Given our location cargo has to be a target for growth and we are in discussions to grow cargo services fur-ther,” he said.

Murphy is confident that Shannon Air-port has several strong selling points. “Full US customs pre-clearance services are a very important selling point,” he said.

“In 2009, Shannon became the first airport outside North America and the Caribbean to offer US pre-clearance fa-cilities for scheduled and corporate avi-ation. It is now the only airport in Ireland to offer pre-clearance facilities for both commercial and private aircraft”.

In the past, Shannon Airport was seen as a leader in innovation, a reputation Murphy is keen to regain.

“While we strive for greater innova-tion as a driver of new business, we will also remain committed to the delivery of a safe, secure and customer-focused airport operation, through the delivery of our service to the highest national and international standards and best prac-tice,” he said.

Other Shannon Airport facilities that appeal to passengers, according to Mur-phy, include easy pick-up and drop-off facilities for hire cars, convenient parking with discounted online offering of up to 50 per cent off long-stay rates.

Passengers can park a car within a five to seven-minute walk of the airport for €30 a week.

At the short stay car park, located just by the terminal, monthly and annual parking is sold to regular customers at reduced rates.

Shannon Airport is located on 855 hectares of land. It has its own fuel storage farm with hydrant delivery systems and water supply facilities.

“We operate a 24-hour service with no curfews, slots or noise restrictions,” said Murphy.

“The airport’s runway is the longest in Ireland at 3,199 metres and is capable of handling all aircraft types. We also oper-ate a fire and rescue service to Category 9 standard”.

The International Aviation Services Centre (IASC) is the business unit within Shannon Group tasked with growing and strengthening the well-estab-

lished aviation cluster in the region. To deliver on this challenge, IASC will

help existing aerospace firms to develop their business, while working alongside IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland to encourage and provide positive reasons for new companies to locate in Shannon.

The aviation industry is global in nature and growing rapidly.

Ireland is in the fortunate position of being an established as a major world-wide centre for aviation activity, espe-cially aircraft leasing.

GPA legacyThis is in large part due to the legacy of Guinness Peat Aviation, the pioneering leasing firm founded in Shannon in the 1970s.

IASC’s work in growing the aerospace cluster at Shannon is set to further con-tribute to the development of Ireland’s aerospace capabilities thus ensuring that the country remains a global centre for the aviation industry.

When Patrick Edmond was appointed to the role of managing director of IASC last year, he was new to the job but not to the brief.

“My background is in aviation and I was part of the Aviation Task Force, formed by the government in 2012, to identify business opportunities for Shannon.”

Based on the findings of the resultant report, the government decided to sep-arate Shannon from Dublin airport and make it independent once more.

Interestingly, Edmond now finds him-self involved on a day-to-day level in

progressing many of the ideas identified within that report.

“We run a small lean team at IASC with an ambition and mandate to develop aerospace activity, creating a globally recognised aviation industry cluster at Shannon with specialisations developed in areas such as leasing, maintenance, aircraft recycling, component manufac-ture and repair, and business aviation,” said Edmond.

With 40 aerospace firms based in and around Shannon, employing approxi-mately 1,600 staff, there is already a solid foundation in the region for development.

“We are not starting from scratch, it is already a strong cluster,” said Edmond. “However we are working to further develop that cluster by attracting new companies as well as building on what’s here.”

Business advantagesIreland offers many well-heralded ad-vantages to inbound businesses including a low corporate tax rate, English as a first language, and being part of the eurozone. For Shannon, there is the added bonus of geographic location and a long estab-lished and strong reputation within the global aviation sector.

“Shannon is home to the world’s first Duty Free and Industrial Free Zone, and it was the place where GPA started. Having such a strong heritage is invaluable,” said Edmond.

“In order to attract more aviation busi-ness IASC has identified strengths of the region and matched them to aerospace company requirements.

“We look at what Shannon is good at, and at its core its key advantage is un-rivalled heritage in leasing and finance and in aircraft maintenance”.

Lease transitionLease transition has emerged as a strong area of focus. “Leased aircraft released by a lessor have to be re-branded, painted and serviced. We already have strong skill sets in those areas in Shannon – now we need to grow business in this particular niche,” said Edmond.

“Maintenance companies already op-erating here include Shannon Aerospace, Shannon Transaero and Eirtech, all of which are already expanding and we are looking to help them develop further by attracting a greater volume of mainte-nance work to Shannon”.

IASC is also looking to develop Shan-non’s business aviation offer as a priority for the year ahead.

“We are unique in that we offer full US Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance for private and corporate jets to land in any airport in the US,” said Edmond.

“Shannon is already established as an important transit point for business jets crossing the Atlantic, with numerous private aircraft passing through the air-port every day.

“Coupled with Shannon’s heritage as a major transit stop between the US and Europe or the Middle East, this is an area ready-made for further development”.

Targeted approachAs Edmond highlighted, it is pointless to adopt a scattergun approach to new business.

“We try to be smart in what we target. We look for a confluence of maintenance and leasing, for example, or leasing with aircraft finance and operations support,” he said.

“We already have a number of leasing

and business support companies located here at present, but there is ample room for growth.

“We are focused on building a cluster and for that we need to create an environ-ment conducive to big players as well as start-ups and SMEs in expansion mode.”

Skilled graduatesOne of the region’s strengths is the pres-ence of high quality third level institutes, including the University of Limerick and Limerick Institute of Technology, both of which work closely with Shannon Group and businesses within Shannon.

“By offering appropriate courses they ensure that people with relevant qual-ifications are available to employers in Shannon and that relevant research is undertaken,” said Edmond.

“Similarly, NUI Galway and GMIT are within an hour of the airport and they too are in dialogue with local industry”.

A case in point, according to Edmond, is the National Centre for Composite Ma-terials at UL. Composite materials are advanced plastics that are used more and more frequently in building aircraft.

This is a key capability for Shannon and having the Centre and ergo access to cutting edge research at its doorstep is hugely significant.

Cargo has been identified as another growth area. Edmond is convinced that there is great scope to build cargo activity ex-Shannon and the starting point is to address the identifiable demand.

“We know through research that a major cargo transport hub located in Shannon would be to the benefit of Irish exports.

“Around 40 per cent of all FDI in Ire-land is located in our catchment area. We know from local exporters that the de-mand for direct cargo services is strong,” said Edmond.

“Currently a great deal of the exports from the region are transported by road to the UK and by plane onwards to their final destination.

“Because there isn’t enough direct ca-pacity here this traffic is being trucked out of Ireland, which is detrimental to Irish export competitiveness. The opportunity is there right now for that traffic to be shipped by air from Shannon”.

Growth areasTo help make Shannon more attractive as a hub, Edmond and his team have been researching the possibility for ac-celerated cargo clearance as well other process improvements that could speed up cargo flows out of Shannon thus giving

the airport a competitive edge. Another area enjoying growth already,

but identified for further leverage, is air-craft maintenance.

“Our nine maintenance hangars are full, even the hangars dedicated to large aircraft maintenance are in use,” said Edmond.

“We are currently in planning phase for a new maintenance hangar, and while its progression will depend on discussions with developers, we expect to break ground in 2015 as we are already in ad-vanced talks with potential partners and tenants”.

As Edmond sees it “Shannon Group has a fantastic range of assets, the airport, the existing cluster, the tax benefits of the free zone and the geographic location.

“What we now need to do is to fully exploit those assets. Shannon was pio-neering in the past and its business model was highly innovative. Our job now is to innovate once again for the 21st century, in a world of global trade flows.

“I am confident not only that the in-dividual business units that comprise Shannon Group will succeed, but also that the synergies between those businesses will open opportunities that we could not previously access”.

For more information visit iasc.ie

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 20142 Shannon 2014

Andrew Murphy,

chief commercial officer,

Shannon Airport

Picture: Press 22

Patrick Edmond,

International Aviation

Services Centre

Picture: Press 22

Everything in this world is connected

Airport boss is predicting double-digit growth this year

Aviation industry takes wing in Shannon

Since its split from the DAA two years ago, Shannon Airport has enjoyed a huge rebound, with new routes, increases in passenger numbers, and more freight, writes Margaret O’Brien

Shannon Group’s aviation services wing believes Ireland’s aircraft leasing sector has scope for further growth, writes Margaret O’Brien

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 2014 Shannon 2014 3

Rebuilding the Free Zone

we’re shannon group.

www.shannongroup.ie

we are proud of our roots and excited about our future.

Originally established in the 1960s, the Shannon Free Zone grew significantly in the decades that followed, according to Ray O’Driscoll, managing hing di-

rector of Shannon Commercial Prop-erties.

“It was focused primarily on manu-facturing and assembly activities during that period, but today there is much more diversification with significant numbers of technical support and financial service companies based in the complex,” said O’Driscoll.

With many of the buildings in the zone constructed before 1990, significant in-vestment is required to bring it back up to the standards needed to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

O’Driscoll, who took on his role just six months ago, has a challenging task ahead. There is much to do, so prioriti-sation is crucial.

“One of my key goals is the redevelop-ment of our commercial property portfo-lio in the Shannon Free Zone complex and other identified key strategic locations,” he said.

“With our new team in place, we are currently finalising a development strat-egy for our portfolio. As part of this, we have begun upgrading some existing buildings at Shannon Free Zone and we

are also evaluating redevelopment op-portunities for the zone.”

“As part of our redevelopment plan, we are working with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland with a shared goal to provide suit-able properties to attract new businesses into the region, to allow exiting custom-ers expand and ultimately to create an environment that encourages greater prosperity, trade and employment for the region”.

Properties on the estate range from advanced manufacturing units to en-gineering, manufacturing and logistics facilities as well as a range of office ac-commodation.

More than 40 aviation companies are located in the Shannon Free Zone, among them Shannon Aerospace, Lufthansa Technik, GE Capital, Eirtech Aviation, Magellan and Transaero.

However, while Shannon is known as an aviation cluster, there are other clus-ters within the complex, including ICT, medical devices, engineering, logistics and pharmaceutical.

Among the high-profile companies in the zone are Intel, EMC, EI Electronics, Molex, Zimmer, Ericsson, GE, John Crane, ThermoKing and Element 6.

“Many of these companies have been in the Free Zone for decades,” said O’Driscoll. “It is only to be expected of a business park initially established in the 1960s that some parts of it require significant upgrading and this work has

already commenced. “We have identified 35 units covering

380,000 square feet for demolition. These units are in the oldest part of the zone”.

“Demolition of the first units will com-mence in January 2015 and a planning application for the new units will be sub-mitted to Clare County Council in 2015.

“This development will commence on a phased basis and while some specula-tive construction will commence initially the latter stages of the development will be demand driven”.

In addition to planned redevelopment within Shannon Zone West, Shannon Commercial Properties is also looking at development possibilities for 130 acres of land in Shannon Free Zone East.

“We have engaged in conversation with a number of prospective tenants for these developments,” said O’Driscoll.

“We are also interested in talking to potential investors, joint venture partners and companies looking for high quality green field sites strategically located next to a international airport and high quality

motorway infrastructure”.In addition to the Shannon Free Zone

complex, Shannon Commercial Prop-erties has technology parks in Tralee, Thurles, Ennis, and Birr and in the Na-tional Technology Park, Limerick.

“These office parks were initially tar-geted at SMEs but today they also house numerous multi-national organisations. Occupancy is running at up 80 percent across these technology parks,” said O’Driscoll.

“There are significant tracts of land available in many of these technology parks and we will evaluate development opportunities as the property market recovers in the regions. In addition, our property portfolio includes a number of advance manufacturing facilities includ-ing those in Ennis and Raheen”.

The company manages nine aircraft hangars on behalf of Shannon Airport Authority, located in the airport com-plex adjacent to Shannon Free Zone. The hangars range in size from 10,000 square feet to 90,000 square feet.

“We have just concluded lease nego-tiations on the last available hangar. We are now in the process of evaluating new development opportunities for hangar facilities and have entered negotiations with a number of parties interested in these proposed facilities”.

As well as development land in Shan-non Free Zone, the company owns a size-able land bank comprising approximately 2,000 acres of development land in Kerry, Clare, Limerick and Tipperary.

“We are assessing development oppor-tunities at these locations and are open to discussion with potential investors, joint venture partners and other interested companies,” said O’Driscoll. “Some are strategically located around Limerick city, with some of the larger sites are in regional areas such as North Kerry, Tip-perary and Clare”.

The remaining property “category” within Shannon Commercial Properties’ portfolio is its small business parks, lo-cated in towns and villages throughout the region.

For more information about locating to the Shannon region, visit the newly launched Shannon Commercial Properties website at shannonproperties.ie

The Shannon Free Zone was the first Free Trade Zone in the world, and spawned many imitators, but to prepare it for the future some of its past has to go, writes Margaret O’Brien

Shannon Commercial Properties, formerly known as Shannon De-velopment, is a dedicated com-mercial property company focused on developing its extensive and wide-ranging property portfolio.

Part of the newly formed Shannon Group plc, it has one of the largest property portfolios in the country, with more than 400 buildings and 2,000 acres of land in more than 50 locations across the Shannon region.

The portfolio includes prime of-fice buildings, multi-let technology parks, engineering, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics facilities.

Shannon Commercial Properties also oversees fully serviced sites available for sale and development.

The largest business park in the portfolio is known as the Shannon Free Zone (SFZ). It is the largest multi-sector business park located in the Atlantic Corridor. A 600-acre business park, it contains more than 100 companies and employs more than 7,000 people.

In addition to the Shannon Free Zone, Shannon Commercial Prop-erties owns and manages technolo-gy parks in Limerick, Tralee, Ennis, Birr and Thurles.

The company owns numerous other business units and facilities in Clare, Kerry, Limerick, Offaly and Tipperary.

Ray O’Driscoll, managing director, Shannon Commercial Properties Press 22

About Shannon Commercial Properties

We are finalising a development strategy

By Margaret O’Brien

Shannon Chamber is taking a progressive approach to representing local mem-bers on the national stage, and promoting a support-ive entrepreneurial culture.

“For companies based around Shannon that are

not currently engaged with the chamber, be it known that we can make a differ-ence. Membership fees are affordable, they depend on the head count of your business,” said Helen Downes, chief ex-ecutive of Shannon Chamber.

“We are not just an events chamber. We engage in macro work to support members, independently, regionally and through the network.

“We model ourselves on doing the right thing, and we engage in regular open and frank discussions. We constantly sell the message that there are great start-ups, SMEs, indigenous and multinationals operating here in Shannon.”

Downes took over as chief executive of the chamber in 2008, initially on an interim basis, having formerly worked for a multinational company as a HR business partner.

A recruitment drive, launched the fol-lowing year, boosted membership by 80 per cent.

Shannon Chamber now has more than 250 members, employing more than 10,000 people.

Downes continues to recruit, however, and is particularly keen to attract more retail members.

“We actively plug into our client base to analyse their expectations and see how we could deliver a better or more appropriate service,” she said.

“Our objective is to deliver a range of services that reflect the diversity of our membership, but yet remain relevant to such a broad base.”

Member forumsAs a representative for the chamber’s business members, Downes is an avid networker, and is keen to ensure that local business concerns are voiced at national level.

“We set ourselves the task to organise high-calibre events that meet genuine needs,” she said.

“We have established a number of forums, including HR, CEO and Health and Safety, that meet once every quarter. At the moment, we are also exploring the possibility of a women’s executives group.”

Such forums allow participants to share their thoughts and experiences on best practice and learning. Networking op-portunities also arise.

“We certainly didn’t model them on anything already in existence, they grew from our research. We identified a need and created a solution,” said Downes.

“As well as being a great resource for the sharing of expertise, they are also great for discussion and learning and impor-tantly they have succeeded in creating a community spirit among businesses, who might otherwise not have engaged with one another.”

CEO eventsSpeakers at the chamber’s CEO Forums have included Shannon Group chief ex-ecutive Neil Pakey and Kieran Mulvey, chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission.

“We are very fortunate to be able to at-tract some great keynote speakers to our events, not least because these speakers know we have a good track record and that the event will be well attended,” said Downes.

“The format usually involves the speaker meeting with the CEO forum privately before they go on to give their public presentation. These events are generally open to all members across the region, but obviously numbers are limited”.

Future speakers will include John Herlihy, head of Google Ireland, and IDA chief executive Martin Shanahan, both of whom are scheduled to present in early 2015.

Member trainingThe chamber is particularly proud of its track record in the delivery of training opportunities to its members and their staff.

As part of its training remit, the cham-ber recently held a half-day lean man-ufacturing event hosted by US multi-national Zimmer and co-presented by Coca-Cola Ireland.

Zimmer, whose general manager Adrian Furey is on the board of Shan-non Chamber, has been running lean workshops on its own Shannon Free Zone premises, in association with the chamber, for the past five years. “We host many events in the premises of member companies and that in itself is a magnet that draws delegates,” said Downes.

“The fact that Zimmer opened its doors for the fifth time for a half-day session attended by more than 70 businesses speaks volumes about the commitment of our members.

“Our training events are of such high calibre that we get lots of enquiries from other chambers in the region and from companies outside the chamber who would like to attend.

“They are dynamic and robust events, often incorporating really interesting speaker sessions.”

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 20144 Shannon 2014

Shannon Chamber’s mission aims to support and inform members

Restoring the fortunes of Shannon Airportfrom page 1Pakey is pleased with the growth in scheduled flights to North America.

“Aer Lingus services to New York and Boston fly daily, Delta also service New York, United Airlines operate into the large feeder hub of Chicago as well as New York, while US Airways delivers a summertime daily service to Philadelphia, one of its main hubs,” he said.

Connections to Britain had also improved, he said. “Ry-anair has just started a daily service to Manchester and, from what I hear, it’s full ev-ery day.

“Links to the UK have been troublesome in the past, but it’s a big market for us so it is important we partner with the right airlines who want to be here.”

Wild Atlantic WayAnother positive for Shannon has been the launch this year of the Wild Atlantic Way, a tourism initiative that has had an immediate and positive impact on tourism numbers in the region.

Pakey is also upbeat about its future potential, and be-lieves that Shannon Airport is ideally positioned to become the hub airport for inbound passengers visiting the route in the future.

It would, he said, act as a catalyst, encouraging great-er numbers of independent travellers, and a younger au-dience interested in exploring the great outdoors in the West of Ireland, and going off the the beaten track in search of

adventure. “We held a meeting in Kerry

last year through the cham-bers. As a result, we lobbied the airlines and some have in-creased airport capacity by 80 per cent through the shoulder season this year,” he said.

“The economic impact of that increase for the tourism economy in Kerry has been estimated at around €20 mil-lion. As you can imagine this is welcome news.

“The experience in securing Kerry is mirrored by what we see from the likes of Galway, Tipperary and Cork.

“Shannon’s catchment area is truly dispersed, reaching out to the rest of Ireland. Some 12 per cent of our US visitors travel to Dublin during their visit, which really proves that on a national level we are first and foremost an international gateway to Ireland.

“What’s really exciting for the region, and indeed the whole west of Ireland is that, unlike The Gathering, The Wild Atlantic Way is permanent and it will evolve over time.”

CapacityFor Pakey and his team, a core issue is capacity. “We attend trade fairs and consumer fairs in Europe and North America to promote the airport and the region,” he said.

“US flights were 90 per cent full throughout the summer, which is great news, but get-ting more capacity remains a priority to allow customers who want to experience a hassle-free airport that op-portunity.

“That’s the foundation we need in order to build more frequency and attract new destinations and carriers.”

As such, in-bound traffic is only part of the equation. “We need to help people realise, through stronger promotion, that from an outbound per-spective Shannon is an excel-lent and convenient gateway to the United States as well as to Europe,” he said.

While he welcomed recent improvements to road infra-structure and, in particular,

the good news that work on the M18 from Gort to Galway is set to resume shortly, Pakey said further improvements were needed to strengthen transport links in the region.

At a basic level, he would like to see more buses serving Shannon, to underpin its im-portance as a strategic access point, and called for “road improvements from Cork to help the many users travelling up the M20/N20”.

Tourism is critically import-ant, but is far from the only business role for Shannon Group.

“We will continue to work to attract new connections to major European hubs as a means to generate more busi-ness for the local and regional economy. Growing the car-go side of Shannon Airport’s business is another key pri-ority,” said Pakey.

Challenges aheadShannon Group faces signif-icant challenges, not least in

fulfilling its role as the region’s biggest economic generator.

“Investment is a huge chal-lenge for us, before we ever cast our sights on new ini-tiatives, we have to invest in regular maintenance for infra-structure including our prop-erty portfolio,” said Pakey.

“While the Shannon Free Zone as an area is hugely im-portant we have to think and act in terms of representing the bigger area, the region as a whole.”

Shannon Group takes a dif-ferent tack to its predecessor. “Shannon Heritage won the tender to manage Malahide Castle and Gardens and is doing a fine job,” said Pakey.

“This success makes us re-alise that there is an opportu-nity to leverage the Shannon Heritage brand further. It has the expertise and credentials to become a heritage com-pany of national significance and this is something we are actively exploring”.

Pakey himself has settled into the region well, resolving to see its sights for himself.

He adopted a nomadic exis-tence for the first six months, staying in small hotels and B&Bs throughout the region to familiarise himself with businesses on the ground and local attractions.

Having adopted the Clare hurling team and Munster rugby, he has settled into life in Limerick city.

“I enjoy the character and edginess of Limerick, the culture reminds me a bit of Liverpool," he said.

"The humour is fantastic, but to be fair, I guess I can’t go wrong across the west and south. We aren’t so dissimilar, the Scots and Irish.”

Shannon Chamber, Unit B9, SkyCourt, Shannon, Co Clare. Tel: +353 61 708341 Email: [email protected]

www.shannonchamber.ie

Should you wish to find out more about business in the region, do give us a call.

Continuously Encouraging and Facilitating Chamber/Member & Member/Member Engagement

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As the LEADING business organisation in the greaterShannon area, Shannon Chamber works with businessin the following ways…

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001925 Shannon Bus Post Advert.indd 1 25/11/2014 15:28

Helen Downes, chief executive, Shannon Chamber Press 22

Kevin Thompstone, president,

Shannon Chamber

Picture: Liam Burke/Press 22

Shannon Airport

Good analysis is key to economic growth, says Shannon Chamber bossan analytical approach to business policy is vital at local, regional and national level, to ensure a vibrant fu-ture for the irish economy, according to Kevin Thompstone, president of Shannon Chamber.

“a weakness in the private sector representative organisations in ire-land is that we are not as strong as we could be when it comes to having a gsood analytical basis,” said Thomp-stone.

“We are good at the practical, but not the analytical. a chamber that is strong in both the day-to-day real-ities of business as well as analysis and understands and communicates the issues effectively, is stronger for it. We need to be more strategic in our engagement”.

Shannon Chamber took a “bigger picture” approach to the develop-ment of the local indigenous econo-my, Thompstone said.

“When we, as a chamber, engage

with iDa or enterprise ireland, we discuss building on the back of over-seas businesses like intel or irish ventures such as ei electronics or Mincon, based on the knowledge we have on the ground,” he said.

Thompstone has lived and worked in Shannon for 30 years, and held the position of chief executive of Shannon Development from 2000 to 2008, managing the organisation through changing times.

“We had to deal with the deregula-tion of the Shannon Free Zone, liber-alisation of aviation services, chang-ing investor and tourist demands,” he said.

“it’s part and parcel of economic development. The economic environ-ment changes and businesses have to change and adapt.”

Thompstone took his first post with Shannon Development in 1985, as a project executive responsible for project appraisal, development and

research for grant aid. “i progressed from there to work

in market research, planning and operations and was appointed CeO in 2000,” he said.

as well as in his own consultancy business, The Thompstone group, he deploys his expertise in research and planning to good effect as president of Shannon Chamber.

“We have the advantage of a good strong board drawn from smaller and bigger businesses across manufactur-ing, service and retail sectors,” said Thompstone.

in addition to a healthy aviation sector, Shannon also had a strong fi-nancial services cluster, and numer-ous iCt, engineering and medtech companies.

“as we know business is cyclical and aviation in particular has proven how cyclical it is, so we can’t be too dependent on it,” he said.

Margaret O'Brien

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 2014 Shannon 2014 5

Fresh approach to regional tourism

Ph: 061 710 000www.shannonproperties.ie

where business lives

Sales & Leasing

Property Development

Facilities Management

Technology Parks

We’ve helped some of the biggest companies in the world to locate here. We’re ready to do the same for you.

The Shannon Heritage brand has extended eastward in recent years, into the heart of the Pale, adding Malahide Castle and Gardens in Co Dub-lin to the growing list of world-famous attrac-

tions under its management. Shannon Heritage is already one of

Ireland’s largest visitor experience opera-tors, with six castles, including its flagship Bunratty and the newly-refurbished King John’s castle. It also has interests in other attractions, including the retail experi-ence at The Cliffs of Moher.

Having won a competitive public ten-der in 2011 to manage Malahide Castle and Gardens for a five year period between 2012 and 2017, the company predicts this will be the first of many moves into jurisdictions beyond the Shannon region, which will see it apply its expertise to other top Irish attractions.

As chief executive John Ruddle out-lined: “Malahide Castle and Gardens has been a very successful project thus far and we expect visitor numbers to keep im-proving. We manage 25 to 30 staff on site with detailed and local work carried out by the team in-situ. There’s also a dedi-cated sales and marketing manager and I oversee the running of the attraction”.

When Ruddle took over, visitor num-bers were close to 70,000. “The challenge we set ourselves was to move those num-bers up to 150,000 by 2016. We are on track to deliver on that commitment,” he said.

“We have developed the offering, opening the gardens, walled garden and west lawn area to the public. An inter-pretative centre dedicated to the Talbot family, who are the owners of the prop-erty has also been added.”

Headquartered at Bunratty Folk Park, Shannon Heritage operates a range of day and evening visitor attractions in Clare, Limerick and Galway, including Bunratty

Castle and Folk Park, Knappogue Castle and Walled Gardens, the “Living Past Ex-perience” at Craggaunowen, Brian Boru visitor Centre, Killaloe, King John’s Castle, Limerick and Dunguaire Castle, Kinvara.

The company has been in the tourism business since 1963, when it hosted it first medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle.

“Shannon Heritage was one of the first companies in Ireland to develop and run heritage attractions and evening enter-tainments. We employ over 300 people during the peak tourist season,” said Ruddle.

“The idea of medieval banquets came about to give transatlantic passengers a reason to get off aircraft at Shannon Airport and tour the local area.

“They grew so popular that we added two other castle venues for medieval ban-quets, Knappogue and Dunguaire, and added a traditional Irish night at the Barn in Bunratty Folk Park which has proved very popular with our European visitors”.

The folk park came about almost by accident. During the course of extending the runway at Shannon Airport, a farm-house that typified the area’s vernacular architecture had to be sacrificed.

Instead of being demolished, it was moved to the grounds of Bunratty Castle. It became popular with visitors to the banquet, and so the seeds for the Folk Park were sown.

That single farmhouse was joined over time by examples of folk architecture from different eras and from all over Ire-land which are spread all over the 32-acre folk park. “It is best described as a living, working museum which recaptures rural life in Ireland over 150 years ago,” said Ruddle.

The success of this attraction led to the rapid expansion of the Shannon Heritage visitor portfolio. Today, the company’s operations contribute an estimated €20 million annually in spin-off revenue, benefiting those in the local accommo-dation and tourism services sectors.

King John’s Castle in Limerick un-derwent major refurbishment in re-cent years, including the addition of its highly rated interpretative centre. Since re-opening in June 2013, visitor numbers have doubled to 85,000 in the past year.

“We like to think of it as a time-travel experience which uses the latest technol-ogy to give people a unique opportunity

to explore Limerick and the Castle as never before.,” said Ruddle.

Touchscreen technology connects vis-itors to exciting tales of sieges and war-fare. The investment in the castle was €6.7 million, with funding sourced from Fáilte Ireland and the former Shannon Development.

“We wanted to create a significant

attraction for the city of Limerick and that castle was the best base to improve on in order to boost tourism. Already in just over a year since it re-opened it has contributed significantly to the re-de-velopment of Limerick,” said Ruddle.

See shannonheritage.com for more information

Shannon Heritage, the operator of six Irish historical tourist attractions, says it is on track to double its visitor numbers at Malahide Castle by 2016, writes Margaret O’Brien

Corporate hospitality is critical to keeping business ticking over es-pecially during the shoulder sea-sons. Shannon Heritage venues of-fer team-building days, corporate galas, banquets and themed events, company Christmas parties, private barbecues and other activities.

Many of the venues are also avail-able to hire for weddings. In a bid to increase its corporate business, Shannon Heritage recently unveiled a corporate membership card that offers a host of benefits to the cor-porate sector when visiting its at-tractions.

“The card is targeted at compa-nies who entertain clients and can be used for visits to our day visitor attractions, evening entertainments – reservations required – and special events,” said John Ruddle.

“Registration is free and gives the owner special admission rates to the Shannon Heritage day visitor attractions and evening entertain-ments in Counties Clare, Limerick and Galway, 10 per cent discount on all Shannon Heritage retail and tea-room purchases, plus special mem-bers’ rates for corporate events and member discounts on gift voucher sales,” he said.

As the first year of operation under the Shannon Group umbrella draws to a close, Ruddle said the key differ-ence for the company is that while previously Shannon Heritage was the tourism agency for the region it is now a fully commercial organisation.

“We still make a significant con-tribution to tourism in the area. Fur-thermore, we see ourselves growing the business beyond our traditional boundaries as we look to add tourism attractions of national importance to our management portfolio.”

Playing its hospitalitycards right

“It has been our best year since 2007, with numbers up 12 percent across the board and that success has led to a great sense of positivity,” said John Ruddle of Shannon Heritage.

“Increased capacity at Shannon Air-port and the launch of the Wild Atlantic Way have definitely helped bring tour-ists to the region. If properly promoted internationally, the Wild Atlantic Way will become a major brand and tourist magnet for the West of Ireland”.

Ruddle revealed that, while the at-tractions under Shannon Heritage man-agement represented a mix of visitor

experiences, “it’s fair to say that most are orientated towards overseas visitors, although Malahide Castle and Gardens also enjoys good levels of domestic busi-ness. Our banquets are very popular with our American guests and, because of how we market ourselves, a high percentage of our business is through coach tours, that’s the audience we get throughout our attractions.

“Our domestic market is a very important segment to us during the shoulder season. In recent years, we have ramped up activity around family holidays including special Christmas,

Easter and Halloween events. “We will top 15,000 visitors at Bunrat-

ty Castle and Folk Park this Christmas, with Santa bookings snapped up since the launch in July. We expect another 5,000 visitors at Malahide Castle and Gardens for Christmas this year.”

Ruddle believes Irish attractions have capitalised since the start of the reces-sion. “Extravagant shopping holidays have been replaced by days out at events like our Santa experience, accompanied by a nice meal, with the family while also taking in an attraction, such as the Folk Park at Bunratty,” he said.

John Ruddle, chief executive, Shannon Heritage Press 22

Wild Atlantic Way lures visitors

Established here just two years ago, lead-ing asset manage-ment firm Pepper Ireland has been

steadily growing its opera-tions and employee numbers, which now stand at more than 240 people.

The majority of its work-force is based in Westpark, Shannon where Pepper has invested over €2 million in a state-of-the-art IT system and office facilities.

In September 2012, the Pepper Group entered Ire-land with the plan to expand its European base from this location.

In this short space of time, the company’s profile has ris-en dramatically, and it cur-rently has assets under man-agement to the tune of €10 billion, from a starting point of €750 million.

In addition to acquiring the Irish residential mortgage business of GE Money, Pepper Ireland has also secured more than a dozen other mandates from Danske Bank, Lone Star, CarVal, and others.

Pepper’s head of mortgages Gráinne Naughton oversees the company’s operations in Shannon. She says being based in Westpark brings great cred-ibility to the Pepper brand, such is the superb quality of working ambience, the me-ticulous attention to facility management, and the scenic beauty of the location.

Naughton was positive about Westpark, the quality of personnel Pepper has recruit-ed in the Shannon region from Limerick, Galway, Kerry and Tipperary, and the company’s ability to deliver a top-class service to its clients.

“There is a very strong work

ethic across the Pepper oper-ation and all our staff buy into the company’s core compe-tencies, which help Pepper to stand out in the marketplace,” she said.

Earlier this year, Pepper an-nounced it would be recruit-ing 100 new staff, which will bring the total to 270 by March next year..

Naughton said that attract-ing quality talent has not been hard, and this year Pepper cre-ated an exclusive “boot camp” training programme with the Institute of Banking, giving employees paid time off to fast-track their qualifications.

Recently, Pepper received its first ever rating from Stan-dard & Poor’s, achieving an “above average” for its resi-dential primary and special servicing and an “average with positive outlook” for its com-mercial primary and special servicing.

The company was also named a National Champion for Ireland in the European

Business Awards 2014/15.Pepper Ireland’s chief ex-

ecutive Paul Doddrell says these achievements are great for the company because they are external endorsement for the hard work of staff.

“We here in Pepper are very ambitious for the future. Our Shannon operation is a major part of that ambition,” Dod-drell said.

“We have already expand-ed our premises in Westpark twice and we are hopeful about creating new employ-ment opportunities into the future,” he added.

Pepper Ireland is part of the Pepper Group, headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Since launching in Ireland, the com-pany has also expanded into Britain, Spain, and South Ko-rea with the global headcount now totalling 1,000 employ-ees. It has over AUS$26billion of assets under management and is one of Australia’s largest non-bank residential mort-gage lenders.

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 2014 Shannon 2014 7

A quiet office in the scenic Westpark Business Cam-pus belies the global reach and

value of its operations. Shan-non Engine Support (SES), a wholly owned subsidiary of CFM International, is the world’s leading provider of CFM56 spare engine solu-tions.

Headquartered in Shan-non, it has 13 strategically positioned engine pool lo-cations around the world to ensure that a CFM56 engine is available to its custom-ers at any time to cater for planned or emergency en-gine replacements.

The CFM56 is the world’s best-selling and most reliable commercial aircraft engine, with a CFM-powered aircraft taking off every 2.5 seconds somewhere in the world.

Today, SES has more than 200 CFM56 engines in its portfolio, managing both its own CFM56 assets and those of third-party investors.

In addition to a high-qual-ity asset portfolio managed by a team of aviation experts, the company also relies on a network of strategic com-mercial partnerships with suppliers such as Lufthansa Technik, Part M and CAE Parc Aviation, also based on the Westpark campus.

Not bad for a team of just 30 highly-skilled people and their soft-spoken South Afri-can managing director Julie Dickerson.

“The excellent labour pool in this region, and it’s strong appeal as a lifestyle location, are key selling points for SES here because we believe that the Shannon region is an ide-al place to live, work, bring up our children and enjoy wonderful amenities in a rich community environment,” said Dickerson.

Costs in the airline busi-ness are enormous and margins are tight. Every un-

planned day – in fact every unplanned hour – an aircraft spends on the ground can represent a substantial loss of revenue for the airline so the pressure to keep such costs to a minimum is always there.

“SES is well-positioned to meet the needs of this fast-changing and dynamic market.

“We have the advantage of a highly experienced team coupled with an established global presence,” said Dick-erson.

“As a result, we can act quickly to give airlines and maintenance organisations flexible solutions, designed for their unique require-ments.

“We continually evalu-ate and expand the scale of our offerings to enable us to provide our customers with turnkey solutions to support their CFM56 spare engine re-quirements.”

SES believes that the maintenance requirements of current CFM56 engines will peak around 2020, and has recently announced an order of its 29 of the CFM56’s successor, the Leap engine.

This order cost $375 mil-lion, signalling SES’s position as leading player for CFM and Leap spare engine solutions well into the future.

A small team, but a global player.

Why SES is Shannon’s air power broker

Pepper Ireland covers Europe from Westpark

Ei Electronics takes lean manufacturing to a new level

As the largest employer in the Shannon region with origins dat-ing back over 50

years, Ei Electronics has am-ply demonstrated the poten-tial for lean manufacturing in Ireland.

“I firmly believe that Ei Electronics is a template that Ireland must follow if it is to reduce its over-dependency on foreign direct investment, maximise the added value in the Irish economy and cre-ate long-term sustainable jobs,” said Michael Guinee,

the company’s managing director.

“We have achieved a world leadership position in a niche market, in residential fire and gas detection,” he said.

“We export to 22 coun-tries, provide good sustain-able employment to a broad skills-based workforce and contribute €40 million an-nually to the Irish economy.”

The company’s niche ex-pertise, local ownership and long-term outlook reflects the approach taken by the Ger-man mittelstand, the mid-sized manufacturers which account for 70 per cent of the jobs in Europe’s most suc-cessful economy, according to Guinee.

Organic growth“It is notable that the R&D, marketing and capital invest-ment that has resulted in the growth in sales to well over €100 million and employ-ment to over 700, has been funded organically without external state or private in-vestment,” he said.

The company manufac-tures 100 per cent of its prod-ucts in Shannon, and serves world markets from its base there. “Ei Electronics is one of the world’s largest manufac-turers of life safety products and the market leader in Eu-rope with its range of fire and carbon monoxide alarms,” said Guinee.

“It truly is a multinational business, with headquarters in Shannon as well as sales and marketing subsidiaries in Britain, Germany and France. A US subsidiary will be estab-lished next year.

“Uniquely, all business functions are based in Shan-non from research and de-velopment to marketing, manufacturing and treasury.”

Equally significant is the fact that all products are 100 per cent manufactured on-site at the company’s 20,000 square metre campus in Shannon.

The majority of Ei’s work-force is based in Shannon, with 680 employees there, 52 in Britain, 18 in Germany and four in France.

Research and development“Product development is the lifeblood of the company and Ei Electronics has consistently been to the forefront of tech-nological innovation in mi-croprocessor-based fire and gas detection, battery tech-nology, wireless connectivity and easy installation,” said Guinee.

The sensors, which rep-resent the company’s core technology, have all been de-veloped in-house. With more smoke, heat and carbon mon-oxide alarms required by reg-ulation, Guinee said control of this life-safety ecosystem had led to the development of a range of alarm controllers.

“Remote access and con-trol of the home sensor network via the cloud to a smart-phone is now a real-ity. The life-safety network of alarms is a constituent part of the ‘smart home’ of today and the recent high-profile entrance to this space by the Google-owned Nest smoke alarm has highlighted this.”

Quality, service and innovationAccording to Guinee, the pil-lars of Ei Electronics’ success are quality, service and inno-vation allied to a skilled and diligent workforce.

“We make life-safety prod-ucts and we take that respon-sibility very seriously. We are paranoid about quality, from design to manufacturing. Service is simple. We deliv-er when we say we will. Our customers find us easy to do business with,” he said.

“Innovation in product and features keeps us ahead of the competition. We have an ex-cellent workforce: intelligent, skilled and ready adapters to change.”

Lean manufacturing“Ei Electronics has disproved the conventional acceptance that it is not possible to man-ufacture competitively and serve world markets from Ireland,” said Guinee.

“Manufacturing 100 per cent in Ireland is very much a deliberate strategy since Ei

Electronics was established in 1988. There are no long supply chains to market, which op-timises service levels, while manufacturing everything in-house with an experienced and skilled workforce ensures that quality is optimised.”

Guinee said it was possible to manufacture competitive-ly in Ireland thanks to “lean manufacturing”.

“Ei Electronics was an early adapter to ‘lean’ concepts, in-troducing ‘Kaizen’, based on the Toyota production system, in 1996,” he said.

“Without Kaizen we would not be the business we are today. It gives us the quality, productivity, lead-time and flexibility to cope with the complexity of serving multi-ple customers across different markets.”

He said that co-locating R&D and marketing with manufacturing led to good cross-functional communi-cation and speed-to-market with new products.

Corporate social responsibility“Ei Electronics is also is a good corporate citizen and is a significant contributor to local sporting, cultural and charitable organisations,” said Guinee.

He said the company had donated a six-figure seed-funding contribution to the planned multi-func-tional arts and civic centre to be known as The Shannon Venue.

“Shannon needs such a facility and the fact that it is multi-functional means it will benefit the maximum number of people in the lo-cale, including our employees and their families.’’

Guinee said the ethos of Ei Electronics was very much about respect. “We have re-spect for our customers and our employees. Get that right and business is simple,” he said.

“The lasting success of the company is down to the loy-alty of our customers to the Ei Electronics brand and to the skills, attitude and flexibility of our workforce.”

Julie Dickerson, managing director, Shannon Engine support

Gráinne Naughton, head of mortgages at Pepper Ireland

Paul Doddrell, chief executive, Pepper Ireland

www.lit.ie

LIT is focused on providing Active Leadership in Enterprise Development, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Socio-Economic Development. Through its Enterprise Ladder Strategy, LIT has developed 6 Enterprise/Incubation/Acceleration Centres to foster enterprise development with a further centre planned in the next 12 months. In addition, through its Active Leadership Group, research partnerships and strategic partnerships, LIT engages and supports established businesses and business owners throughout the region in a variety of ways including Innovation Vouchers, Innovation Partnerships, Collaborative Research & Development Projects, Training, Mentoring, Consultancy and many other supports. LIT has developed a number of innovative enterprise programmes to support start-up and growing businesses in the region. Through these programmes and incubation services, LIT has supported the creation of over 150 innovative businesses and helped create over 600 jobs in the last seven years (2007-2014).C

LIT’s research activity has increased almost exponentially over the last few years. Its strategy of seeking to discover new commercialisation pathways for compounds from natural sources to pioneering life-sciences research, which has again seen a project travel into space to the International Space Station this year, has been added to by specialist research centres and groups focusing research efforts over a wide variety of disciplines.

ACTIVE LEADERSHIP INEDUCATION, ENTERPRISEAND ENGAGEMENT

LIT ReseaRch enteRpRise and development

Business decisions for growth are rarely black or white. Dynamic organisations need to apply both reason and instinct to decision making. We are Grant Thornton and it’s what we do for our clients every day. Contact us to help unlock your potential for growth.

Damian GleesonE [email protected]

Offices in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Kildare and Limerick

@GrantThorntonIE

www.grantthornton.ie

Reason says:there are three

ways to go.

Instinct says:only one leads to

growth.

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Ireland’s midwest region continues to benefit from foreign direct investment (FDI), particularly in ar-eas such as research and

development, manufacturing and services.

“The midwest benefits from a range of different activities across a number of sectors, including life sciences, ICT, engineering, financial services and aviation,” said Conor Ag-new, IDA’s regional business development manager for the midwest.

“The region is going through a positive period of exciting growth. Within the past 12 months, three new projects in the life sciences sector alone are delivering €350 million of investment to the region.”

These projects have directly created 570 knowledge-based jobs and more than 900 con-struction jobs through the development of new state-of-the-art facilities.

Agnew said the projects, including new facilities for Regeneron Bio Pharma and Ethicon Bio Surgery, and a €30 million R&D centre for Analog Devices, were rep-resentative of the region’s knowledge-driven industry clusters.

“Shannon is playing a sig-nificant part in this cluster development. Zimmer em-ploys almost 300 people in orthopaedics manufacture while UCB and Roche are key players in the pharma space,” said Agnew.

“A range of high-quality, in-digenous sub-supply compa-nies such as Shannon-based Smithstown Light Engineer-ing, Bolgers, Ohshima, Thor-mac, Fabricated Products and Sheet Metal Products are, by any standards, top-rated in how they meet the require-ments of leading life sciences companies.”

Financial services

Healthy growth is also tak-ing place in the financial ser-vices sector.

“Pepper Asset Servicing, headquartered in Australia, is building up its operations at the world class Westpark business campus where it now

employs more than 120 staff, while one of India’s leading multinational companies, Wi-pro, employs more than 250 staff there,” said Agnew.

They are among other global financial services companies located in Westpark, Shannon, as well as world-leading air-craft leasing companies GE-CAS and Aer Cap.

Genworth Financial Ser-vices will shortly re-locate to a recently acquired 70,000 square foot facility in West-park.

“When you add in the Northern Trust Limerick fi-nancial administration centre, which has grown rapidly to 500 staff, and new arrivals such as Glass Lewis, it is clear that the Limerick/Shannon axis is becoming a major player in the area of financial services,” said Agnew.

He said the ICT cluster was continuing to grow apace with long-established companies such as Analog Devices and Dell winning new mandates.

“For instance, Analog with 1,200 staff, of which no fewer than 600 are fully engaged in R&D activity, will shortly open a new €30 million R&D centre at Raheen,” said Agnew.

“Intel Design employs close to 300 staff at its Shannon R&D centre and Mentor Graphics has completed a significant capital investment at Smith-stown, while ICT companies such as Molex, Geon, Emer-son Networks, Technotree, EMC and Symantec make for a comprehensive cluster of leading ICT names.”

IDA’s roleIDA assumed the remit for

FDI development in the Shan-non region in January.

“In view of the concen-tration of the significant FDI client base in both Limerick and Shannon, much of IDA’s itinerary promotional activity includes both locations wher-ever appropriate,” said Agnew.

“IDA’s role is to support the management of the existing client base to expand their operations and employment by winning additional man-dates and to win ‘new name’ or greenfield FDI projects.”

Almost 70 per cent of new IDA jobs come from the ex-pansion of existing clients, so a core part of IDA activity involves support for expan-sion programmes, research, development and innovation investment projects and train-ing initiatives.

“Attracting new name FDI investments to the Shannon/Limerick area is greatly facili-tated by the presence of world leading companies as ‘refer-ence sellers’. These include Intel, Zimmer, Genworth, GECAS, Aer Cap and Wipro,” said Agnew.

“Another draw is the pro-vision of world-class prop-erty solutions by private sec-tor providers such as Brian

O’Connell of Westpark and entities such as Shannon Air-port Group.”

He said the IDA was work-ing with a strong pipeline of FDI activity. “We continue to work with our existing client base and new name compa-nies to continue to generate significant further investment for the mid-west,” said Ag-new.

“It is worth noting that there is a broad range of FDI activity that takes place across the region that can often go unnoticed publicly due to the nature and sensitivity of the business needs of the client investing there.”

Staying competitive

Agnew said that the quality and cost of services and prod-ucts were paramount. “Clients are operating in a cut-throat global marketplace,” he said.

“We are not a low-cost busi-ness environment so, accord-ingly, business must be won on the basis of flexible quality services and products.

“Every cost element must be challenged to ensure we offer our client companies a genuinely cost competitive and productive operating environment.”

He said critical success fac-

tors to continue attracting FDI included: competitively priced prop-erty solutions; utility prices for electricity, gas, and water services that did not put companies at a competitive disadvantage, and; the development of skill sets to match industry needs.

“IDA works with proper-ty solution providers in the public and private sectors to ensure all appropriate solu-tions are provided to our client base,” said Agnew.

“IDA is in the process of acquiring two large property land banks from the Shannon Airport Group. These are the National Technology Park and Raheen Business Park.

“IDA will develop master plan site development pro-grammes in conjunction with the tenant clients to meet cli-ent requirements,

“IDA is also working with the Shannon Airport Group’s property department to market its property options to prospective FDI clients in Shannon and at the other re-gional locations where it has business park developments.”

Aviation opportunities

Agnew said the change

of ownership and focus at Shannon Airport had already yielded impressive results, in terms of increased passenger throughput and additional route and schedule options.

“IDA continues to work with the management team at Shannon to identify and exploit opportunities to win new business activities right across the range of aviation services,” he said. “IDA has engaged successfully with the world leading companies in the aircraft leasing sector, GECAS and Aer Cap, to en-courage an expansion of their activities.”

Agnew said the mainte-nance, repair and overhaul sector (MRO) was a major employer in Shannon with large-scale operations such as Shannon Aerospace and Transaero.

“Proposals have been ap-proved to support expansion opportunities in this sector. IDA particularly welcomes proposals from the training and educational networks

to build a pipeline of skilled workers and graduates to ser-vice this important industry sector,” said Agnew.

“We particularly welcome the development of a new third level degree in aero-nautical engineering at Uni-versity of Limerick and note the positive contribution of the MRO companies such as Shannon Aerospace, in both the design of the course pro-gramme and the delivery of teaching content.”

Agnew said Shannon Air-port Group was developing proposals to expand the in-frastructural options for the development of the aviation sector at Shannon.

“While many countries worldwide are focused on de-veloping an aviation industry and it remains a very compet-itive, cost-sensitive sector, the Shannon offering combined with the development of al-lied technical competencies should leave it well placed to compete successfully,” he said.

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 20148 Shannon 2014

Conor Agnew, IDA’s regional business development manager for the midwest

The midwest’s awake once again Conor Agnew of IDA is at pains to stress the crucial role of foreign direct investment to the region’s economic health, writes Ruth Wildgust

Ireland’s fourth largest in-stitute of technology, LIT is at the heart of business engagement and inno-vation in the mid-west.

With more than 6,000 stu-dents and almost 600 staff, it is a key higher education presence in Munster, with four major campuses and three other centres strategically located in counties Limerick, Tipperary and Clare. A vibrant force, it fosters collaboration and development in a region undergoing significant trans-formation.

“Our distinct mission and role is exemplified by unique achievements,” said Dr Fer-gal Barry, vice-president of research, development and enterprise at LIT.

“These include the accolade of Sunday Times Institute of Technology of the Year 2009 and 2013. Our fashion design department is rated in the top 50 in the world.

“We have carried out joint research and enterprise devel-opment work with Nasa and the Irish Technology Lead-ership Group. We are also the only IOT to date deemed ‘highly effective’ – five out of five – under the institutional QA review process.”

This is set against the back-

drop of Limerick’s designation for City of Culture for 2014, an initiative in which LIT is in-volved. Limerick as a modern urban centre enjoys a reputa-tion for advanced industry and education.

“A dynamic and forward looking city, Limerick offers a great deal to its 20,000 third level learner population with cultural, social and sporting events at the cornerstone of everyday life.

“The city is synonymous with sporting activities of all disciplines. Thomond Park, home to Munster rugby, is a stone’s throw from the LIT Moylish campus,” Barry said.

Limerick city and county councils recently announced details of a €250 million plan aimed at transforming Limer-ick city centre and the regional economy, with Shannon Air-port and Shannon Foynes Port Company forming key infra-structural aspects.

Since 2011, LIT has two campuses in Tipperary, in Clonmel and Thurles, former-ly Tipperary Institute. Student numbers are growing rapidly, creating a lively campus ex-perience.

As a new enlarged third-level institution, LIT will enhance higher educa-

tion opportunities throughout Limerick, Tipperary, Clare and surrounding counties, bene-fiting current students, future graduates, industry and the wider community, Barry said.

Barry said LIT prepared learners for fulfilling and chal-lenging futures, fostering the professional, intellectual, so-cial, cultural and personal de-velopment of the individual.

“The hallmark of our edu-cational philosophy is active learning through a fusion of theory and practice. We pro-

vide third- and fourth-level education, training and re-search, and play a pivotal role in the economic and socio-cultural development of our region,” he said.

Core disciplines include the humanities and arts, so-cial science, business and law, science, IT and engineering. These are complemented by applied research, enterprise and engagement activity.

LIT has embraced a distinc-tive and agile educational phi-losophy, cognisant that gradu-ates must function in regional and global workplaces and the wider community.

An example is the Limer-ick for IT initiative. Comprised of key industry stakeholders, third level institutions, indus-try support agencies and city representatives, its core mis-sion is to facilitate job creation.

Already it has been respon-sible for the creation of more than 250 jobs in the Limerick Shannon region in 2014.

LIT has played an active role in Limerick for IT by creating and developing immediate and future graduates with the necessary IT skills and competencies.

Specific programmes that support the skillset pipeline include enterprise solutions development – an eight-week programme developed and co-delivered with industry partners J&J, GM, HP, The Kerry Group and SAP.

LIT also participated in the HEA ICT Skills initiative. It provides two HDip one-year programmes, software devel-

opment and creative multi-media programming, devised to upskill non-computing graduates in IT.

Applied research projects at LIT have grown from 12 in 2004 to more than 80 last year, with projects ranging from €5,000 to several million euro, according to Barry.

LIT’s research programme, he contended, reflects a spirit of innovation that will benefit

society. “We engage in innovative

applied research in partner-ship with industry, supporting international operators as well as indigenously grown export-ers like Reagecon Diagnostics, based in Shannon Industrial Estate.

“Such applied research fo-cuses on existing or emerging areas of academic expertise within our organisation, en-

hanced by talented research-ers that we attract nationally and internationally.

“Our academic and research staff work at the forefront of their subject areas, bringing the latest ideas and discoveries into the classroom.”

An LIT research project was chosen by the Space Florida International Space Station Research competition as one of just eight worldwide to

travel to the space station on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral in September.

LIT is the first Irish institu-tion selected as a leader and principal investigator in an ex-periment to the international space station, Barry said. This, he contended, is validation of the progressive and crit-ical nature of LIT’s research programme.

Leo Clancy, head of ICT, IDA,

Ray Dowling, chief executive, Kemp,

and Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs,

at the announcement of 132 new

jobs in five IDA Ireland client companies

Picture: Maxwells

Employment in IDA clients’ companies

Location companies staff numbersLimerick 44 companies *7,284 total employmentShannon 55 companies *5,072 total employment*Forfas Employment Survey 2013

Foreign investment projects announced in midwest since 2013Foreign direct invest-ment (FDI) projects announced in the mid-west over the past 12 months have included: February 2014:

Regeneron Bio Phar-maceuticals received planning permission for a 300-job Bio Pharma manufacturing facil-ity at the former Dell site. This €300 million project is proceeding well with 600 building and contractor staff employed and the first 50 Regeneron staff re-cruited. March 2014: Kemp

Technologies an-nounced an expansion of 50 jobs at its National Technology Park (NTP) facility. April 2014: Ethicon

Bio Surgery, part of J&J Group of companies, announced an €80 million medical device manufacturing facility at NTP. More than 100 of the projected 270 staff are already re-cruited. June 2014: Viagogo,

the world’s leading ticket marketplace facilitator, announced plans for its new Lim-erick international op-erations centre. Viagogo moved into its new NTP facility in October 2014, and already employs more than 120 staff. October 2014:

Optel Vision, a Cana-dian company that is a leader in Track & Trace vision inspection sys-tems, announced a 140-job project for Raheen, Co Limerick. Already 20 staff have been re-cruited and a formal opening is scheduled for November 27. October 2014: Fil-

tertek, a US company based in Newcastle West, Co Limerick an-nounced a 35-job ex-pansion of its medical device manufacturing facility.

One of the world’s top fashion design departments and a seat in the international space station prove LIT is a leader in innovation, writes Caroline Allen

LIT ensuring it never goes out of fashion

Dr Fergal Barry, vice-president of research, development and enterprise at LIT

Limerick Insitute of Technology

Several success-ful indigenous companies with global reach are headquartered in Shannon, where Enter-prise Ireland

provides support to both start-ups and established firms with the ambition to scale inter-nationally.

“Enterprise Ireland is mak-ing a major contribution in the Shannon area and has provid-ed €2.4 million so far this year to companies in Co Clare for research and development, market development, expan-sion and equity investments,” said Jerry Moloney, director of Enterprise Ireland’s midwest region.

Moloney said that more than €8 million had been paid to companies in Clare since 2010.

The agency supports a wide spectrum of companies from early stage start-ups that can avail of innovation vouchers, mentors and the New Fron-tiers programme, through to companies that require direct financial supports to grow and internationalise their busi-nesses.

“In County Clare over 150 companies have been sup-ported directly with a high concentration in the Shan-

non area and many more en-trepreneurs at the ‘exploring ideas’ stage have been sup-ported. These companies em-ploy 2,500 full time and 365 part time staff,” said Moloney.

“Enterprise Ireland as-sumed responsibility for in-digenous companies in the Shannon free zone at the end of last year. We previously had responsibility, since 2007, for supporting indigenous com-panies in the mid-west region, including parts of Shannon outside the free zone”.

Moloney said business sentiment in the region had picked up following the estab-lishment of Shannon Group in September, which merged the responsibilities of the Air-port Authority and the for-mer Shannon Development agency.

“We work closely with Rose Hynes, Niall Pakey, Ray O’Driscoll and the team at Shannon Group in helping to foster a strong enterprise eco-system in the area,” he said.

“Most of the companies in the Shannon area are trading internationally. Companies such as Modular Automation, Reagecon, Bolger Engineer-ing, Smithstown Light Engi-neering, Mincon, Fabricated Products, and EI Electronics are examples of growth busi-nesses all of which have been

supported by Enterprise Ire-land.”

Enterprise Ireland is prior-itising the aviation sector in Shannon and is supporting companies that have identi-fied opportunities in the sector through a number of focused initiatives.

“We liaise closely with Pat-rick Edmund, head of the In-ternational Aviation Services Centre, which is part of the Shannon Group, to help grow and expand existing business in the area and attract new start-ups in the aviation sec-tor to locate in Shannon,” said Moloney.

He said a competitive avi-ation starter fund and avia-tion feasibility fund had been launched last year to seed ac-tivity in the aviation space.

“We provided funding of €375,000 to 20 companies with aviation business ideas they wanted to explore. We funded 50 per cent of the cost of the feasibility studies and the companies funded the other 50 per cent,” said Moloney.

Of the 20 companies that succeeded in obtaining fea-sibility funding last year, half were from the greater Shan-non region.

Enterprise Ireland is work-ing closely with Limerick In-novate to look at innovation

generation for business in the broader midwest region. It is also working with the Shan-non Group to look at oppor-tunities for spin-outs and or spin-ins.

The state agency supports companies like Mincon, whose equipment rescued the Chiliean miners, operat-ing out of Shannon as well as Smithstown Light Engineering which, according to Moloney, is one of the best tool making businesses in the country.

“Ei Electronics manu-factures smoke and carbon monoxide alarms which are supplied to many countries worldwide, and it has over 500 employees in Shannon,” he said.

Continuous innovation and a strong R&D focus have yield-ed significant competitive ad-vantages for Shannon-based Reagecon Diagnostics, which has developed a pipeline of new products over the past three years that continues to yield a sizable output of pat-entable inventions, innova-tions, features and benefits.

“We have been very lucky with the product development areas we have selected, the high calibre of management and staff that work with us and the support we continue to receive from our stakehold-ers, Enterprise Ireland and Ul-ster Bank,” said John Barron, Reagecon’s managing director and chairman.

“Since 2011, we have spent €3 million on R&D and we will spend a further €4 million between now and 2016. We also hope to create a further 25 jobs in addition to the 25 created in the last two years,”

said Barron.“Reagecon is the larg-

est producer worldwide of chemical and physical stan-dards, reagents and certified reference materials. These are extremely high-tech products that are used to calibrate and qualify scientific instruments, control laboratory tests and validate new test methods,” he said.

The products are developed and manufactured in Shannon and sold through distributors in 150 countries and directly to end users in Ireland and China through sales offices in Shannon and Shanghai. The company operates from a 64,000 square foot facility and employs 86 people, over half of whom are chemists.

Barron established Reagecon in 1990 with three others and initially special-ised in the development of electrical conductivity stan-dards which were spun out of Barron’s doctoral thesis and which were new to science at the time.

Until 2010, the company went through various itera-tions, including a number of acquisitions and disposals, one of which was the purchase of a distribution business that is still trading very successful-ly in the Irish market.

In 2011, John and Brigid Barron bought out the other co-founders and, with the help of BES funding and re-tained profits, embarked on a major R&D programme.

“This process has been transformational and, com-bined with a clear vision and strategy, we have developed over 5,000 new products cov-ering 21 product types targeted at several new market niches,” said Barron.

“For a company like ours with unlimited ambition to scale, the ecosystem in terms of grant supports and tax cred-its is very attractive here in Ireland at the moment.

“We have a pipeline of new projects planned that will bring us up to 2020 and gen-erate revenues of €50 million.

“Reagecon believes that in order to be successful it needs to combine R&D with accred-itations, high quality business development, and effective-ness and efficiency”.

In the area of accreditations, in particular ISO 17025, Barron said Reagecon had achieved several world, European and Irish firsts and continued to focus on this area as an integral part of its suite of competitive advantages.

The company had spent more than €50 million in the last 10 years on wages, ser-vices and building projects and supports as many not-for-profit organisations and charities as possible, Barron said.

Reagecon is a recent winner of the Ulster Bank Business Achievers Award for Munster and has been short listed in a number of categories in the Irish Laboratory Awards.

Reagecon is now part of En-terprise Ireland’s Innovation 4 Growth programme and we believe that continuous roll out of innovation across the company will propel us way ahead of our competitors and generate exciting career op-portunities for our excellent team of managers and staff,” he said.

For details of available supports, contact Enterprise Ireland, Mid-west Regional Office, 4500 Atlantic Avenue, Westpark, Shannon, Co. Clare, T: 061 777061, or see enter-prise-ireland.com

The Sunday Business PostNovember 30, 2014 Shannon 2014 9

Funding for the business basicsEnterprise Ireland is providing tax incentives, mentoring, and cash grants to businesses in the mid-west region that are ready to go to the next level, writes Ruth Wildgust

After seven years of helping cli-ents to navigate the recession, Grant Thornton

is seeing a welcome return to growth amongst indigenous clients.

“Evidence of this resur-gence amongst our indige-nous clients is represented in top line growth which has accelerated through 2014,” said Damian Gleeson, partner at Grant Thornton Limerick, which offers a broad range of accounting and business advisory services.

“After years of contracting turnover levels, this is very much welcomed and we are well placed to work with our clients through this growth phase,” he said.

Although many compa-nies have returned to growth, Gleeson said legacy debt from the Celtic Tiger era still hung over a significant number of businesses.

“The contraction in top line turnover through the re-cession years has put some businesses in a place where they simply have no chance of repaying the level of bor-rowings that they currently have on their balance sheet,” he said.

“We are assisting businesses in this position either through refinancing at a lower level of

debt with their existing bank or banking at a sustainable debt level through other in-stitutions.”

He said there was an urgent need to attract new business to the mid-west region primarily in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI).

“While the east coast seems to be bursting at the seams following the exit of the re-cession, the mid-west has yet to benefit from this recovery. Since the IDA has taken over the reins from Shannon De-velopment, the opportunity now exists to further target foreign direct investment, which will give the region a well needed boost,” said Gleeson.

Ready access“The mid-west region

is blessed with access and knowledge infrastructures, particularly with its inter-national airport at Shannon, deep Sea Port in Foynes and inter-urban road and rail net-works”.

In today’s challenging busi-ness environment, he said in-ternational access was a basic necessity for firms operating in global markets, both in terms of physical access and the ability to transfer electron-ic data and information.

“The region has a developed

international business sup-port infrastructure, including a modern broadband telecom network, a sophisticated sub-supply base, professional service providers and a care-fully planned physical envi-ronment to meet the needs of international business,” said Gleeson.

He said the midwest had an excellent reputation for the quality of its third level institutions. The internation-ally renowned University of Limerick recently celebrated its 40th anniversary and con-tinues to attract an increasing number of overseas students.

“The University is one of the leading sources of grad-uates for industries such as engineering, IT, business and science,” he said.

The Institutes of Technology in Limerick and Tipperary also host world class programmes.

“The ready supply of a young, highly-educated workforce gives the mid-west region a substantial advantage in attracting FDI companies,” said Gleeson.

“We very much welcome companies such as Regeneron (occupying the former Dell building) Zimmer and Gilt setting up in the mid-west. There is plenty of room for new investment into the re-gion,” he said.

“There is a feeling that the mid-west, although being a fantastic environment in which to live, it is very much underpopulated, and such investment would assist in balancing this.”

Future development

Limerick City and County Council has announced plans to bid for Limerick City to be granted the title of European Capital of Culture 2020.

“A tender process is cur-rently underway to secure consultancy services to pre-pare the bid, which follows on foot of the city’s hugely successful period in 2014 as Ireland’s first National City of Culture,” said Gleeson.

He said another for-ward-looking initiative was the formation of Innovate Limerick to drive the Limer-ick 2030 economic plan for the city.

“Launched a year ago, Lim-erick 2030 has a price tag of €250 million and significant funding has been approved by the European Central Bank. The Limerick 2030 strategy has been described as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ plan to guide the economic, social and physical revival of the inner city,” said Gleeson.

“The plan proposes the de-velopment of riverside plazas and shopping malls and in-volved wide public consul-tation.

“Key aims of the 2030 plan include a world-class water-front; the transformation of the city’s three main thor-oughfares, O’Connell Street, Catherine Street and Henry Street – a city centre square and plaza, a new University of Limerick campus in the city centre, renewal of the Geor-gian quarter, and a re-devel-

oped Colbert Station.”Looking further afield,

Shannon Foynes Port Com-pany (SFPC) has launched a 30-year plan to develop port facilities along the Shannon estuary.

“Referred to as Vision 2041, the plan charts the develop-ment of Foynes port and Lim-erick docks over the next 30 years,” said Gleeson.

“SFPC is an important asset for the southwest of Ireland and it also aims to attract sig-

nificant international invest-ment.”

He said the master plan was part of a bigger picture for the Shannon Estuary as SFPC developed its vision for the future and focused on pro-moting the port as a strategic economic driver for the mid-west region.

“As a result the Shannon Foynes Port Company is to begin talks with IDA Ireland to attract more foreign direct investment and bring more

employment to the entire Shannon estuary region,” said Gleeson.

“All of these exciting initia-tives give a renewed sense of optimism to the region. It is terrific to see the collabora-tive approach among the re-gion’s academia, enterprise agencies, local authorities, Shannon Airport Authority, Shannon Foynes Port Compa-ny, IDA and the community of multinational and indigenous firms.”

John Barron, Reagecon’s managing director and chairman

Supporting start-upsGrant Thornton Ireland can trace its history back to 1899 and today the firm has more than 600 people operating from offices in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Kildare and Limerick.

“Our Limerick office primarily services the Shannon region and has almost 90 staff working with a diverse range of clients across a broad spectrum of industries from listed companies, through to multinationals and many signif-icant indigenous entrepreneurial enterprises,” said Damian Gleeson, partner, Grant Thornton Limerick.

“We are currently involved in a number of projects to assist indig-enous business in the mid-west region. One such project, which was set up in an effort to support entrepreneurship and stimulate job creation in the region, is the Enter-prise Ladder Fund [ELF].”

He said Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) Thought Lead-ership and Advisory Group had created a unique, privately gener-ated fund to support the early and developmental stage for start-up businesses in the mid-west region.

“The €1 million ELF is the first

seed fund specifically for start-up companies at an Irish Institute of Technology. Qualifying companies can expect to receive funding from €10,000 to €25,000,” said Gleeson.

“Since its establishment in April 2012, the ELF has provided much needed early stage financial equity for start-up companies in LIT’s existing enterprise centres and for start-ups across the greater Limer-ick region,” he said.

“I think it is safe to say that the fund has made a meaningful difference in helping start-up businesses to grow and also by

encouraging increased collabora-tion amongst academia, enterprise agencies and donors of funds, with many of the donor companies also providing mentoring and advisory services to a number of the quali-fying companies.”

Gleeson said the timing of the ELF was critical.

“Grant Thornton has been de-lighted to be involved with the fund. It has and will continue to provide start-up companies with that first early stage financial sup-port enabling them to develop into viable businesses,” he said.

The accountancy firm says Limerick’s businesses are on the mend after the recession, and that means the region is too, writes Ruth Wildgust

Back to business for Grant Thornton’s Limerick clients

Damian Gleeson, partner, Grant Thornton Limerick Eamon Ward

Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs,

with Rose Hynes, Shannon Airport,

Mary Considine, Shannon Airport

and Jerry Moloney, regional director,

Enterprise Ireland Mid West at the

launch in Westpark, Shannon

Picture: Eamon Ward