The Irish Timesis profiling the 24 finalists in the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year competition. The second four of the eight finalists in the international category are featured this week. They will be followed by the finalists in the industry and emerging categories who will appear on subsequent Mondays. The winners in the three categories and the overall winner will be announced on October 25th at a ceremony televised by RTÉ.
Nominee: Dave Ronayne, Mainport
An integrated marine services company, Mainport is Ireland's leading ship-owning and operating group. The original business, Ronayne Shipping, was founded in 1957 by his father, Finbarr, who sold part of his group in 1973 to Glasgow based Clyde Shipping and then merged with their existing Irish interests in the form of Mainport.
A management buyout took place in 1988 and Ronayne was appointed chief executive in 1995. In 2002 the group turnover was €14 million with 170 employees and only operated in Ireland. In 2007 they employ nearly 750 and engage in trading activities across international markets, and expect a turnover of close to €70 million. The firm's HQ is in Cork but they have offices in Drogheda, Limerick, South Africa, Norway, Caspian Sea and Aberdeen in Scotland.
Product/ Service:
Mainport operate on and offshore Ireland and in International markets and waters. Onshore activities include: stevedoring, ships agency, warehousing and base management in locations of Cork, Foynes and Drogheda. Marine activities include: towage, supply vessels, salvage and bunkering barge. On the international market they provide supply and standby vessels for the offshore oil industry, seismic support vessels, ships agency and logistics management in South Africa.
Customers:
In Ireland they provide supply boats to: Marathon Oil in Kinsale gas field and internationally to Shell, Total, Conoco, Philips, Statoil, Hydro and Nexen. Towage in Shannon customers include: ESB Moneypoint, Aughinish Alumina, Foynes Port. The stevedoring/ships agency-sector customer's include: Grassland Fertlizers, Eucon, Grimaldi, Moyglare, Lisheen Mine, Irish International Trading, Leeside, Scotline, Central Fisheries Board, StoraEnso, Lysline, Baltic Ireland line, Rautaruukki Steel.
Q:What is your biggest business achievement?
A:We recognised in 2002 that we could not just rely on our Irish market as it was too small. We were the biggest supply boat operator in Ireland, but we were also the only company with two vessels as there is only one oil company in the Kinsale gas field.
Our growth has brought us to having 20 vessels in Aberdeen and Bergen, three support vessels between Brazil and India and four vessels in the Caspian Sea.
Q:Has your Irishness contributed to your success?
A:Yes, in a big way. The Irish are nearly always liked on first impressions, we can work hard and also play hard. We can get on with other nationalities; we did not have an empire. We are always referred to as the Irish but this is meant in a positive, can do, good fun approach.
Q:What is the biggest challenge you see your industry facing?
A:In our international supply boat/standby sector, there are a huge number of new builds coming to the market in 2009.
This will be a big challenge for our older vessels. We need to maintain a market niche. The ongoing and increasing regulation for shipping worldwide will also be a challenge. We do recognise we need standardisation for safety reasons, but sometimes trying to satisfy too many countries leads to complex compromises.
The demands on our sector to respond to the unique and challenging environment of the Caspian Sea will also feature.
Nominee: Liam casey, PCH International
PCH International is a world-class supplychain management company. Founded in Cork in 1996 with its main operations in Shenzhen, China, the company employs 800 people in Ireland, China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, USA, Brazil, the UK and South Africa.
In 2006 PCH had sales of $117 million (€87 million) in 2006 and contributed some €6 million to the Irish economy.
Products/Services:
The services offered include: design, engineering, manufacturing, quality management, fulfilment and logistics. One of its recent additions is fulfilment of web orders to consumers in North America. This operation is managed directly from its Shenzhen. The time from receipt of the order to delivery to the consumer can be as little as two days. Informationsharing is critical in any supply chain, especially if a product is designed in California with components coming from Japan, Korea, Singapore, then assembled in China and sold in retail stores around the world. PCH has developed its own proprietary suite of software to enable greater visibility throughout the supply chain. This software is used to monitor the movement of a product from development stage to delivery, to the end-consumer.
Customers:
The company's customers are mainly multinationals based in North America, including the star performers of Silicon Valley. These include three of the top five personal computer companies, three of the top five telecom and networking companies, three of the top five consumer electronics companies and the top five leading contract electronics manufacturers. For these companies PCH acts as their gateway into China.
Q:Describe your progress from start-up to your current status.
A:After spending two years commuting between Ireland and Asia building up knowledge on factories and capabilities, I began to take on a few staff to develop a single source import-export business. By 2001 the business was sourcing from multiple factories involved in increasingly complex supply chains. As we began to move further up the value chain, we advanced the range of services provided along with the scope of our teams.
Q:What motivates you to succeed? Who do you measure yourself/your success against?
A:Taking what at first sight appears to be a highly complex supply-chain problem for a customer, and working that back to a simple and unique solution, that's a fantastic feeling. It's all about helping people to do great work. Our purpose is "developing partnerships, delivering peace of mind" and that's it in a nutshell.
Knowing that our customers can sleep at night without worrying what is happening to their product, that's my motivation.
Q:What is your biggest business achievement?
A:The company has only been in existence for 11 years and only offered the current suite of supplychain solutions for the past three of those years. To be able to convince global multinationals to choose us as their partner for managing their supply chains in China is no mean feat.
Nominee: Gerry Barry, Fintrax
The Fintrax Group is a financial services company specialising in multicurrency payments - dynamic currency conversion - credit card processing and the management of VAT refunds for tourists (tax free shopping).
In 1985 the company developed a mechanism which enabled the refund of VAT on goods purchased overseas. The facility allowed for immediate cash refunds at the two Irish airports and through a pioneering agreement with the Irish tax authorities advanced to Fintrax recovering the VAT directly from the Revenue, therefore removing the administrative burden on retailers.
Its global headquarters is in Galway, with regional headquarters now in Paris, Toronto and Canberra. The company employs over 270 staff.
Products/Service:
The principal services offered by the Fintrax Group are tourist tax refunds, trading under premier tax free and multi currency credit card processing. However, this is better known as dynamic currency conversion . With operations worldwide, Fintrax provide payment solutions for banks, merchants, tourists and business travellers. Merchants equipped with the proprietary currency conversion payments system can offer foreign card holders the choice to pay for their goods and services in their billing currency at the point of sale, while retailers continue to be settled for purchases in their local currency.
Customers:
Fintrax has long been regarded as the industry pioneer. Their customers include governments, banks, airport authorities, retailers, hospitality sector and prestigious luxury-retail brands throughout the world.
Q:What vision prompted you to start up in business?
A:I started researching various different business opportunities. Most were not feasible or viable until, having reviewed the detail of the 1984 budget, I recognised the potential opportunity whereby a central organisation would be uniquely positioned to eliminate the paperwork and administrative burden otherwise incurred individually by retailers, tourists, Revenue Commissioners and Customs.
Q:Are there any interesting or unusual circumstances surrounding the inception of the company or its evolution?
A:Convincing the Department of Finance/Revenue Commissioners to pay us direct rather than the traditional model of depending on the retailer to pay the VAT element and merely acting as postmen on behalf of individual retailers. Our agreement enabled us to circumvent many of the problems that can afflict many start-up companies: cash flow and bad debts.
Q:Discuss the biggest challenge you see your industry facing?
A:Ever expanding well-intentioned, and sometimes necessary bureaucratic compliance requirements that involve uneconomic, and in some circumstances disproportionate, resource allocation.
Nominee: Dr Sir Allen McClay, Almac Group
Almac Group is a global service provider at the forefront of the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. The company employs over 1,200 skilled individuals at its headquarters in Craigavon, Co Armagh, with another 800 employed in the UK and east and west coasts of the US. Since it was established in 2001, an investment of over $600 million (€446 million) has enabled the development of the Craigavon site.
Products/Services:
The group is made up of five divisions and can provide a seamless "one stop shop" with services ranging from diagnostic, research and development, active pharmaceutical ingredients manufacture, formulation development, clinical trials and delivery of the finished product. The five divisions are: Almac Diagnostics, Almac Sciences, Almac Clinical Services, Almac Clinical Technologies and Almac Pharma Services.
Customers:
Almac works with over 600 firms worldwide, including all the market leaders within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Each customer is guaranteed a dedicated project management service to meet individual needs.
This ensures they experience continued success in their ventures
Q:What vision prompted you to start up in business?
A:From the beginning I have believed that a successful business - no matter the sector - comes down to having the right people in the right positions, and giving them the tools to do the job. My vision was simply to deliver the best pharmaceutical development company that I could in Northern Ireland. That was my academic background and I wanted to make it work.
Q:Any interesting or unusual circumstances surrounding the inception of the company or its evolution?
A:I suppose the most unusual thing is that around six years ago I retired from business, and that lasted for a weekend. I simply couldn't accept that I no longer had a role to play in business.
Following my retirement on a Friday afternoon, on the following Monday I went back to the site where I had established my first company, Galen, and there and then started to build Almac.
Q:What is your biggest business achievement?
A:Had I written a book it would be called: "How and Where Not to Start a Business." I began Galen in 1968, just as the Troubles were starting in Northern Ireland.
It was a very difficult time and I have to stress that thankfully the civil unrest never once held back the company or stopped a sale. But to have been successful in that difficult environment gives me enormous satisfaction
Q:Express the biggest challenge you see your industry facing?
A:International competition. There is no doubt about that. For the pharmaceutical and life-sciences sector to flourish in Ireland, North and South, we need to sustain a people-led economy. That means industry working with government, universities, colleges and even schools.
We must invest in people and encourage our young people in particular to embrace new ways of doing business.
Other countries will do our jobs more cheaply in the future. We have to add value in the way in which we do our business.
