Exporter award for Flahavan

CHARLIE TAYLOR

FOOD FIRM Flahavan’s has capped a successful year by scooping the overall Exporter of the Year Award for 2009.

The Co Waterford-based firm picked up the Irish Exporters Association-sponsored gong at the annual Export Industry Awards at the RDS in Dublin on Thursday.

Based in Kilmacthomas, where it employs 50 people, Flahavan’s is one of Ireland’s oldest family-run businesses, having been set up around 1790. It is the country’s only remaining commercial oat mill.

Flahavan’s Progress Oatlets, Organic and Quick Oats are the leading porridge oat brands in Ireland and the company, which launched in the UK market in 2003, now has sales through retailers such as Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Waitrose. It has also begun to export its oat products to Spain and the US.

In the past year it has embarked on a strategic investment plan, committing €1.6 million to more energy-efficient grain dryers, as well as new storage units with capacity for 4,000 tonnes.

Chairman John Flahavan was among nominees for this year’s Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Flahavan’s sales and marketing director John Noonan was recently named by Marketing magazine as its marketer of the year for successfully repositioning the brand and for developing a long-term strategy to compete with other brands.

Other winners at the IEA awards were Diageo and biotechnology firm Genzyme.