It's a grave business but someone has to provide that penultimate human service. Finlays of Ardee, the Co Louth coffin and casket maker, was yesterday awarded with a monthly DHL award for developing export sales of its funereal products. The company follows in the footsteps of another earlier success in coffin exports, Count Dracula. The creation of Irish novelist Bram Stoker the Count travelled widely, his silk-lined casket providing a familiar home-from-home; indeed the ashed-faced aristocrat would not be seen dead without his casket.

Finlays has developed an export business to Britain and Spain as well as serving the home market with 70 different models of coffins and caskets. Members of the family-run company explained yesterday that a casket is an American-style rectangular coffin. With a three-inch mattress inlaid with satin, the coffins are enough to keep any body resting quietly and there have been no complaints, the chairman of the company, Mr Colman Finlay, was quick to point out yesterday. As well as receiving the award, the company, which employs 32 people, has also won £1,000 worth of international shipments and is one of five shortlisted companies which will compete for the 1998 DHL Export Award.

Mr Finlay, whose father evolved the company from a saw milling business in the 1930s, said that the coffins' finish and the quality of materials used had marked their success. They are made from a variety of hardwoods, including mahogany, oak and obeche, a west African timber. The third generation of the family to work in the business, Mr John Finlay, said that the target for this year was to produce 18,000 coffins, with up to half being exported. The Spanish connection came about after a funeral director came upon the Finlay's Website earlier this year. The company has hopes to develop markets in the Netherlands and Belgium.