A MARKETING fellowship launched by the Irish Food Board will see 25 recent graduates explore the possibilities for exports into 12 overseas markets.
Details of the programme were given to a recent meeting of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee by Aiden Cotter, chief executive of Bord Bia, who said the young people would work in Russia, the UK, Europe, the United States and Asia.
“They will work on 168 commercial assignments for 113 Irish exporters while also meeting the rigorous disciplines of the UCD Smurfit School of Business from which they will, at the end of the programme, receive a master’s degree,” he said. “It is a programme which . . . will bring renewed energy, vitality and fresh thinking while adding further momentum to the search for new markets, new opportunities and most of all new business for Irish food and drink,” he said.
Mr Cotter had praised the Department of Foreign Affairs for supporting the fellows in the marketplace and specifically where Bord Bia had no physical presence. This was the case, he said, in Copenhagen, Warsaw and Dubai.
The board, he said, was launching a new trade awareness campaign covering 12 markets, with online and offline advertising and social media, to put Irish food and drink manufacturers front of mind among continental buyers to coincide with the arrival of the 25 fellows in the markets.