FRIDAY INTERVIEW:Elgin Loane, owner of the Irish Post
ELGIN LOANE owns a newspaper, but hates giving interviews. However, he is gradually, if reluctantly, becoming used to the higher profile he now holds in the Irish community in Britain, following his purchase of the
Irish Post
from the Cork-based Thomas Crosbie Holdings.
Sitting in a restaurant over breakfast near his offices in the Smithfield Market in London, Loane said: "I am not normally a person who gives interviews, I am not used to doing interviews. I am not looking for interviews. But, I am willing to do it for the Irish Post."
The Irish Postwas closed by Thomas Crosbie Holdings in mid-August, with just hours of notice given to staff, leading to fears among the Irish in Britain that a voice that was particularly important during the 1970s and 1980s would be silenced forever.
However, a campaign led by the newspaper’s chief executive Niamh Kelly and senior journalist Fiona Audley led to a flurry of meetings, including one in the House of Commons with concerned MPs, before a number of bids were made for the closed title.
Like many of the generation of Irish emigrants from the ’80s and ’90s – and unlike those from earlier times – Loane was an occasional, rather than devoted, reader of the Post as he settled into life as a printer in Birmingham from 1992.
"I read it a couple of times when I first came over 20 years ago. I used to pick it up once or twice a year if I was travelling and I was at a train station, if I had gone through the Financial Times, or the Times," he recounted.
However, Loane is a businessman, with a keen understanding of the bottom line. Blessed with "a great brand", the Irish Posthas, he insists, a great future, particularly if it improves its internet offering to readers "which wasn't strong".
“I believe that there is a valuable market out there. It is a valuable resource. There is so much happening here that directly affects the Irish community. That community has to have its own news source.
"Every morning I read The Irish Timeswebsite, I flick over to the Independent, and in 15 minutes I have read everything and I am off. We can't hope to compete with that, but we can compete with a valuable source of information about the Irish in the UK," he said.
So far, Loane has been getting to know some of his audience, visiting Irish groups in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.
“The response has been incredible. On the first visit, we went up to the Leeds Irish Centre on a Tuesday for OAPs’ lunchtime. There was a big round of applause. From nowhere we had people coming up shaking our hands, with the older people saying they used to buy it and they had been sorry to see it go. The same in Manchester and Birmingham,” he said.
He read about TCH's decision to close the Irish Postin August: "Immediately I thought, 'that's of interest'."
Within days, he and colleagues had met the newspaper’s staff: “What became most obvious was their initiative. Like any businessman, one of the issues you have is keeping staff motivated and driven. Here, you actually had people here saying, ‘save us, we want to work’. It was an extraordinary campaign. Then there was the Commons meeting. That was another vote of confidence,” he went on.
"One of the reasons I bought the Irish Postis that I do remember reading on the internet that the world has changed and that the Irish Postis dead. Well, not if I can do something about it," he declared trenchantly.
However, he still seems surprised that its closure, if brief, occurred: “The Irish are not anything like the Jewish community in London and the way that they are tied together. That would never have happened to a Jewish newspaper. Over their dead body would that happen.”
After he had trained as a printer in Burton-on-Trent, Loane became an accountant “to fit 10 years into a nutshell”, he says, before he bought a printing copy-shop in London’s Mayfair which now operates 24/7, closing only on Christmas Day.
Later, he bought a struggling reproduction printing firm, the Colour Company, which grew from turnover of £1 million a year to £2.5 million before Loane added FedEx’s Kinkos chain of shops. Today, his reproduction printing arm employs 70 people and boasts annual turnover of £7 million.
About 18 months ago, he bought a business called the Wren Press, which held two royal warrants – one for the Prince of Wales and the other for the Queen. Because it was in administration, Loane had to go to Buckingham Palace and ask for Wren’s royal warrants.
“I said that I was saving the business and the jobs, and asked if they would release the warrants. They did, saying ‘we’ll see how you go’.
“We supply a lot of stationery to the royal household and, what would you say, to the English upper class. It is a good business, it has opened doors for me. No matter where I go, the Wren Press is a great calling-card,” he says, though he is cautious about expanding further on the subject.
Around the same time, he bought the Lootclassified ads paper and the West Midlands-centred Bargain Pagesfrom the Daily Mailgroup. "They were moving on, they had become sub-scale for them. They just couldn't give it the management attention they needed. They had bigger fish to fry."
Classified papers and printing run in the family. His father Nelson led a management buyout of Adare Group, whose franchises include Kall Kwik and Prontaprint, and which was sold in 2006 for €170 million. He bought Buy and Sellin Ireland in 2009: "Like everything in Ireland then, it wasn't the business that was the problem, it was the €15 million in debt. The business was making some money but there was no hope of paying down the debt."
Loothad been a big name in the UK. "When I came to London, it was a big name; it was up there with the Daily Telegraphand the Daily Mail. But it lost its way in the internet age and was replaced by eBay and Gumtree."
Loot's website, with the help of Lithuanian web-designers, is undergoing an expensive refit. "I bought it for its brand. It was a big brand in the UK. We are hoping to invigorate that, both online and in print. It will drift towards online. " Bargain Pagesis a lovely little business in Birmingham. It is local to the West Midlands. It is really the only classified player there. We are looking to get its online presence going," said the Cork-born, but Dublin-raised Loane.
Loane’s journey has required an ability to learn. “I had always been in older, mature industries but these are companies that are affected by technology, so there is a bit more to it than that. I have been trying to get to grips with all that. Finally, I am getting that together.”
His decision to buy the Irish Posthas brought him prominence among the Irish in Britain. For a private man, it is something to which he is still adjusting.
“I have had people say, ‘how come we have never heard of you, Mr Loane?’ I have largely ploughed my own furrow here.
“I have to be honest, Britain has been a great host. I have never had a problem being here as an Irishman. When I came to the UK, I didn’t know anybody, so I did my own thing. When I was up in Birmingham, I didn’t go to the Irish Centre.
“Things didn’t dawn on me. It is only when I look on those years that I realise that I could have done more. I just did my apprenticeship. My main concern was getting home every few weeks and doing my shifts.”
"I had largely become integrated into the English community. Until I bought the Irish Post, all of my business contacts and friends were English. When I first went to the UK and went into the factory, there were no Irish people there. It was all English. It started from there.
"I largely stuck to the English way of doing things and I have largely found it very refreshing to have the Irish Postaround. [It] has restored – restored is not the right word, re-invigorated – my enthusiasm for Irish people and what we can do."
Like most Irish living in the UK in the 1990s and later, he was never convinced of the merits of the boom at home: “Dublin changed. Twenty years ago, it was the greatest city in the world for me. The quality of life was incredible.
“Within 10 years, it had been largely destroyed, with everyone going around brash as anything. The greed was incredible. That was the one striking thing. The greed of developers wanting so much for everything. I mean, when is enough?” said Loane, who still returns frequently to visit his parents.
Now that emigration from Ireland has restarted, Loane says life is not the same for them as it was for those who came in the 1980s and 1990s: “Today, there is competition from everywhere. Thirty years ago, the Irish did the trades. Now people can come from anywhere. I don’t think that London is the city of opportunity for the Irish that it used to be, mainly because it is exposed to so much competition.
“When we were trying to get a plane back from Vilnius last week, there wasn’t room. They are hungry. They are the new Irish,” he said, adding that Britain has changed, too. “
It isn’t as clubby here now. It is far more of a meritocracy than ever before. It was a sad thing that people were leaving Ireland all the time but it created the network for when people did go. For the 10 or 15 years when people didn’t leave during the boom, that created a bit of a void; there are not as many in the network. It will establish itself again, I have no doubt about that.”
Under his charge, the Irish Post, now back in publication, will be part of the change, he insists: "Sales are slightly higher than they were before it went into liquidation, at 19,000. That's break-even. For us, it is. I can understand TCH's position. As an island, it couldn't survive. As part of a larger structure where you have only the marginal cost of the rents, the rates, the IT, suddenly it becomes a profitable operation. Already, the Postwould be giving a positive contribution to the business, so we can't complain."
Besides developing online, Loane is determined that print sales, which once exceeded 40,000, can be improved: “I do have an ambition to increase it. There’s a line-by-line examination of Irish areas going on. We have a lady ringing newsagents one-by-one checking up.”
On the Record
Name: Elgin Loane
Age: 38
Position: New owner of the Irish Post. He also owns a number of print and media-based businesses with offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Worked with his father in Adare Printing for five years, and with venture capitalists Schroders in Australia. He was part of an effort, with Ian Hyland, to relaunch Business & Financein 2001.
Something that might surprise: A chartered management accountant, he also worked as a broker with Goodbody Stockbrokers.
