As recently as five years ago, engineering group BMC Manufacturing Group was employing 60 people and reporting profits of just over €50,000. Last year, profits came in at €22.5 million and it has recently announced plans to add 500 staff to the 212 it currently employs.
On Tuesday, building materials heavyweight Kingspan said it would spend €900 million of the €1 billion headroom it had for deals to acquire it.
The business, founded 35 years ago in Ashbourne, Co Meath, is one of a slew of Irish businesses cashing in on a global data centre boom.
The business designs and makes low-voltage switching gear, which distribute and supply power to the individual servers in data centres, making its products critical to facilities needed to drive artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
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Kingspan is buying BMC because the Cavan-headquartered building materials player is already supplying data centres with insulation, flooring and other equipment that they need.
BMC’s products are a logical addition to this, allowing the Irish group to sell more equipment and services to the rapidly growing data centre industry, Kingspan told analysts.
Founded in 1991 by businessman Brendan Meehan – its chairman and the “BM” of the group’s title – BMC began supplying its products to the data centres that technology and telecoms businesses were building here over the last decade and a half.
As the Republic was a leading early location for the data industry, Irish companies that designed, built and equipped the centres, developed expertise that quickly became saleable abroad as similar facilities began springing up in other countries.
Like many others, BMC followed its clients, first to Europe, and more recently to the US, as the data industry began growing rapidly in those regions.
The group’s financial results for last year show that €77 million of its €105 million turnover came from outside the Republic, with Europe accounting for more than €72 million. The rest of the world came to €4.6 million while Ireland amounted to €28 million.
BMC’s revenue almost doubled last year from €58 million in 2024, when Europe accounted for €37.5 million of the total and Ireland contributed €16.4 million.
Profit grew to €22.5 million last year from €14.8 million in 2024. Net assets doubled to €45 million. BMC has grown rapidly this decade. Company returns show it made €379,000 profit in 2022 and €52,368 the previous year.
Kingspan expects that trend to continue. Turnover this year is expected to top €280 million, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of about €90 million. Ebitda will double again in 2027, it forecast, to €180 million.
Among its clients is multinational Amazon Web Services, which has a significant presence in the Republic where BMC now has four plants, two in Dublin and two in Co Meath.
While its accounts indicate that Europe and Ireland accounted for most of its revenues in recent years, the US looks destined to loom large in the future.
Announcing this week’s deal, Kingspan noted that BMC plans to “rapidly expand into a state of the art manufacturing facility in the US”, where the AI race is mostly taking place.
Kingspan is paying €600 million cash and €250 million in new shares for BMC. Although ownership was recently restructured into an unlimited company, annual returns filed last year for Brendan Meehan Controls (Manufacturing) Ltd, show Meehan himself owns most of the group.
Chief executive Colm Sheridan, chief operations officer Justin Murphy and chief engineering officer Greg Madden also hold small stakes in the group, those filings show.
While the business has grown rapidly, it has kept out of the spotlight. Two sources familiar with the industry say Meehan and his colleagues prefer to focus on the business and not court publicity.
Assuming competition regulators clear the transaction, that management team intends staying with the business after the deal closes in the final three months of the year.
