SUCCESS STORIES:Ronnie and Lyla Steele started rearing ducks 50 years ago. Today they supply some of the best Chinese restaurants in Europe and employ more than 150 people. In the first of a new series, they share their recipe for business success
THE CELEBRITY CHEF chef Heston Blumenthal is known for the ludicrous lengths he’ll go to in order to find the best ingredients. So when he was searching the globe to find the best duck, he traipsed through China and most of Europe before ending up on the outskirts of the sleepy village of Emyvale, Co Monaghan.
“He kept hearing that our ducks were the best available,” says Ronnie Steele, who founded Silver Hill Foods with his wife, Lyla, more than 50 years ago. “So he came over, and was very impressed. He ended up using it in his BBC programme In Search of Perfection on how to make the perfect Peking duck . . . He obviously has good taste.”
Blumenthal hasn’t been the only one to cotton on to the quality of the Silver Hill ducks. Go to any of the best Chinatown restaurants in the UK, Europe and even Asia, and there’s a 90 per cent chance that their ducks have been sourced from this small-scale, family-owned food company, based in the heart of drumlin country. You’ll also find its produce on the shelves of upmarket London stores such as Fortnum Mason.
These days, Silver Hill’s display cabinet in the hallway of its small office complex is quickly running out of space. In the past couple of years alone the company has received numerous gongs and pieces of crystal, including an Ulster Bank Business Achievers Award in 2009, for best family-run company; the prize for best food producer in this year’s Irish Restaurant Awards; a place on Deloitte’s 2011 list of best-managed companies; and nomination as a finalist in the 2011 Green Awards.
All this is not bad going for a couple who, by their own admission, knew little about ducks when they bought their eight-hectare farm outside Emyvale in early 1960s. “I wanted to do turkeys and Lyla wanted to do chickens,” Ronnie says, smiling at his wife. “So, like in any good marriage, we compromised.”
Today the company produces about 60,000 ducks a week, all part of a special breed that is hand-reared and fed on a natural diet. The result, say fans, is meat that’s succulent, tender and full of flavour. The company’s products range from smoked spiced duck-breast fillets and honey-roast duck to confit of duck leg and duck sausages.
IN MANY WAYSit's the least likely of success stories. In the food industry's race to the bottom to produce the cheapest possible meat, smaller-scale Irish producers are finding it more and more difficult to compete. Yet Silver Hill stands out as a model for how other producers can compete and win in the global market. Its duck is also the kind of premium product that the food industry, not to mind industry in general, says is important in reigniting the economy. About 90 per cent of the company's produce is exported.
Silver Hill is also a beacon of local success in an area that suffered badly during the Troubles and is saddled with high rates of joblessness. It currently employs about 150 people across five sites over a 30km radius.
Despite the scale of the operation the company manages to retain the air of a family farm. Silver Hill is now managed by Ronnie and Lyla’s son, 42-year-old Stuart Steele, and many of the people who started work during the early days of the farm are still employed, as are some of their children. The bulk of the workforce is drawn from the surrounding area.
“The secret of our success is very simple really,” says Stuart, who lives cheek by jowl with the production plant, along with his wife Helen, an artist, and their three children. “We won’t compromise on quality. We’re constantly innovating, bringing new products to the market. And we’re ambitious.”
Ronnie and Lyla, now aged 79 and 80, still play a role in the farm. They are a charming and softly spoken couple, but their manner hides a steely determination. Did they ever think that their small farm would grow to the point where it would be garlanded with international awards? There’s a pause.
“Of course,” says Lyla, sounding almost bemused by the question. “You have to be confident. We worked hard seven days a week. We started out with the intention of breeding the best duck in the world. We were ultraconfident. We couldn’t have approached it any other way.”
Ironically, the business almost never got off the ground. Getting finance then, as now, was tricky. Initially the couple were refused a loan to start the business, and they got the money from a second bank only after threatening to walk out of the meeting.
Ronnie and Lyla had met a few years earlier, in a hatchery – “where else?” jokes Ronnie – and both were working in relatively lowly jobs in the poultry industry. Given that they had some experience in the area, they were keen to give their business idea a go. But these were challenging times: electricity was unreliable, and making a phone call was tricky. Their phone number was Emyvale 24, and it could take hours to arrange a simple call to the UK.
In the early years Wednesday was the big sales day, and they’d drive down early to Smithfield market in Dublin to sell their duck. Soon the capital’s butchers and fishmongers were coming directly to them, including Molloy’s on Baggot Street, Sawer’s on Chatham Street and McConnell’s on Grafton Street.
“The population in Ireland was too small, and duck was a real luxury,” says Ronnie. “We realised we’d have to export to live, really. That was in the late 1960s, early 1970s.”
The couple were constantly researching how to farm the best duck. They made mistakes along the way, but also innovated, identifying the best feed for the birds and discovering new ways to incubate duck eggs that meant 90 per cent of them would hatch, compared with 70 per cent previously.
The big expansion in their business came when they started exporting to London. Soon the best Chinese restaurants in the UK were looking for their duck, and production was ramped up from a few hundred a week to several thousand.
Marketing was also a big focus. In the infancy of trade fairs they were travelling across Europe and inviting wholesalers to Co Monaghan to visit the plant and spend a few days in the country. In the mid-1970s, decades before it became fashionable to market goods to China, the couple were visiting the country, looking at duck production there and making sales contacts.
When Ireland joined what was then the EEC, Silver Hill became the first company to get official approval for export by our food authorities. “We were given the number 801, because the authorities here didn’t what their European colleagues to know how small the industry was,” says Ronnie.
IT HASN'T ALLbeen a fast track to success. The Troubles didn't make things easy, with the Border checkpoint a few kilometres away holding up deliveries and visitors for hours. Food scares and controversies over Irish beef and pig meat are a constant reminder of how precarious the industry can be.
The downturn has also had an impact on the growth of the company, forcing it to scale back at a time when it was pursuing ambitious plans to expand production. Although it has been hit by the recession, its dependence on exports has insulated it from the worst effects. Today almost 90 per cent of the duck produced by Silver Hill is exported, mainly to the UK, Germany and France.
The biggest threat has been the cheap poultry flooding the market from countries such as Thailand. “It would have been impossible to compete with those prices,” says Stuart Steele, who took over the business a decade ago. “So we decided to stress the quality of our duck. It’s in our DNA here. We don’t compromise on anything. We like to think we made the right decision.”
In the meantime the company has embarked on a five-year plan to grow its business by about 40 per cent and focus on new and emerging markets.
If much of what the company does is traditional, much of it is thoroughly modern and sustainable. It seems nothing is left to waste. Duck manure is turned into fertiliser, which is sold in garden centres. Gas from the slurry powers the factory, saving the company millions in electricity costs each year. Duck feathers, an efficient natural insulator, are used in bedding and pillows.
Silver Hill aims constantly to come up with new ideas. It has a research-and-development unit headed by a top chef (poached from Castle Leslie) who comes up with fresh approaches to cooking and preparing duck. A number of other chefs are employed too, in various roles, such as sales and marketing. The company also organises recipe competitions,
All in all, Stuart Steele wouldn’t be anywhere else. He is steeped in the tradition of the company and considers his work a passion rather than a job. “I live on site, in the original farmhouse my parents bought. It’s my left arm,” he says. “At the end of the day this is a duck farm. We’re just trying to bring it to the nth degree. We’re stretching people here, stretching their perceptions, ambitions and ideas. We’re very lucky we have a bunch of people who can exceed those expectations.”
He has learned from his parents as well as from the employees the company has hired over the years. So what are the vital ingredients for success? “Faith in your product is key,” he says. “Employing people who are better than you, and empowering them. Making mistakes and learning from them. And listening to your customer. Always listen to your customer. Our attitude is that we’re only as good as our last duck, so we can never afford to rest on our laurels.”
