Little-known Irish firm sees off big players to win energy contract

Mr Martin Blake has come a long way from his days as a dairy farmer.The former IFA official does not like to be called a "beef baron" and compared to the likes of Mr Larry Goodman or Mr Paschal Phelan, his beef company Honeyclover Ltd is relatively small.

It made a pre-tax loss of €154,479 in its most recent accounts (to the end of December 2000) and the last few years have been tough.

However, by securing one of the biggest public contracts of the year, Mr Blake has shown that lack of major financial muscle is not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle in the electricity game.

While Mr Blake as chairman of Premier Dairies has been involved in some corporate deal-making, his company Mountside Properties would have been a minnow compared with the other entrants to the power station competition.

The company's name was so unfamiliar, the holders of the competition, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), incorrectly called them Mountainside Properties in an early press release on the competition.

While Mountside is not a household name in the electricity sector, its partners in the project are well-known. Gamma Construction, a Turkish company, has extensive international experience in building power plants, including the Huntstown gas-fired plant in north Co Dublin. Investec Bank, a South African bank, are acting as financiers for the project. But there is no under-estimating Mr Blake's coup in pulling off the deal, especially considering the relative size of his companies.

For example, Scottish and Southern Power, which entered along with Bord Gáis, makes an annual pre-tax profit of £629 million.

Based on these kinds of resources, Mountside - most people concluded - stood little chance of winning.

The presence in the competition of Viridian, which already has a station in Dublin, raised the bar even higher for Mountside.

Despite these hurdles, Mountside managed to convince the CER panel. The decision was ultimately one for the energy regulator Mr Tom Reeves.

The former secretary-general of the Department of Public Enterprise, Mr John Loughrey, was process auditor for the competition. This entailed ensuring the competition was held in a fair manner.

Mr Blake and his brothers are listed as the shareholders of Mountside Properties. The only non-family shareholder is a Mr Frederick Malone from London.

He previously worked with Mr Blake on a thermal waste disposal business. Mountside was incorporated in late 1998 and has barely traded since that time, according to its accounts. That is likely to change now.

Mr Blake was unavailable for interview yesterday and this reluctance to go in front of the cameras may have contributed to the surprise when the announcement was made yesterday.

"His group Mountside Properties kept very quiet during the competition and most people assumed this was because they did not even expect to win themselves," said one source.

To describe Mountside as outsiders in the competition would be understating the position. Quite simply, nobody gave them a chance.

But the group's promise to deliver the project at a price that other consortiums could not match may have played a part in the win.

Mr Blake found himself in the national media before when another of his companies, Thermal Waste Management, applied to build a controversial waste incinerator in north Kildare.

Under sustained local pressure Mr Blake had to come out and defend the project, although this ultimately proved fruitless because An Bord Pleanála turned it down.

Mr Blake's company, Honeyclover, has previously received €886,080 under the controversial passport for investment scheme. This is recorded as a shareholder's loan in the last set of accounts filed by Honeyclover.

While Honeyclover is hardly a household name, the Tynagh mine in Co Galway certainly is. Over the last few years local people wondered who precisely owned the mine site. Now they know who owns it and what is going to happen on the site.

Two decades after its closure the inhabitants of Tynagh are still voicing concerns about potentially toxic traces left on the site.

But yesterday Fine Gael senator, Mr Ulick Burke, who lives close to Tynagh, said Mountside's win was very positive news for the area.

He said it would attract more industrial investment into the area.