Bushmills rolls out red carpet for US investors and showcases NI potential

Visitors cannot fail but be impressed by the relaxed pace of life in the scenic locality, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor

A PARTY of the 120 US company executives exploring possible investment opportunities in Northern Ireland will travel to the north Antrim coast tomorrow to visit Bushmills Distillers. This will be a new world for these hard-nosed business chiefs.

The visitors will take a tour around the 60-acre site in the company of supply manager Gordon Donoghue and master distiller Colum Egan, the former a Scot, the latter a Laois man, who have made their home in the area.

From a business perspective they will learn how its owner, Diageo, has developed a streamlined operation at Bushmills and how it has its sights on doubling its sales in the next three years.

They'll see how water drawn from a tributary of the Bush River beside the distillery finally, some years down the line, ends up, sealed and bottled, 40 per cent proof (or more), the water of life, uisce beatha, destined for home and world markets.

But, at the end of the tour, and as they sample the lovely 1608 Bushmills whiskey specially produced to mark the 400th anniversary of the company this year, they'll also be afforded an insight into a way of life, which is just that bit slower and more relaxed than the visitors' side of the Atlantic. Much more moderately paced too than Dublin, London or Glasgow, as Donoghue and Egan cheerfully acknowledge.

These two blow-ins, so to speak, are the perfect pair to pitch Northern Ireland to the Americans as a sound place to invest, a good place to work, and a happy environment in which to raise a family.

Listening to them you sense they've landed on the proverbial pig's back in finally ending up in Northern Ireland.

Egan, a 38 year old from Portarlington, who hasn't lost any of his midlands accent, is the son of a retired garda and teacher and has an engineering background. He became a distiller as much through chance as through vocation, his good nose and sense of taste, so that he can personally test the various makes of whiskey from "grain to glass", landing him the Bushmills post six years ago. He is one of only three master distillers in Ireland.

"My key job is to ensure that the same character, the same quality of whiskey that we are making today is the same as it was, as good as it was, 50, 100, 150 years ago," he explains.

His wife Clare, whom he met in London 12 years ago is from nearby Ballycastle, and that is where they live. They have two children, seven-year-old Oscar and Jack, aged four. "The kids love the place. We have them hurling in Ballycastle, learning rugby over in Coleraine. They're playing soccer, they're playing everything. I can leave here at half five and be on the beach at quarter to six. This is paradise."

During the annual marching season Bushmills had a reputation for favouring confrontational displays of loyalism.

However, travelling through the town now there is a sense of local people realising that they have a commodity that they must protect.

The distillery attracts 120,000 visitors annually and there is a developing awareness that such an asset must not be jeopardised. There are good restaurants in Bushmills and the town exudes a bright pride in itself.

Egan and Donoghue certainly love the place. In fact Egan creates an image that Tourism Ireland could develop: "Each morning I drive the 15 miles between Ballycastle and Bushmills . . . One day I was driving along when a car overtook me. What happened there, I wondered? I knew it was odd but I couldn't quite figure it out. And then it dawned on me - that was the first time a car had passed me out on the road . . . Up here you just drift into a more relaxed lifestyle."

Gordon Donoghue's father was an engineer with Tennents in Glasgow and he naturally gravitated to the distilling industry after studying chemistry.

He worked in a number of Scottish whisky companies but after Diageo took over Bushmills in 2005 he seized his chance to become supply manager at the plant.

His family is grown up but he too loves the area. "It's great," he says, with his Scottish burr.

Bushmills is selling up to 500,000 cases of whiskey annually and has ambitions to double that figure by 2011.

The firm has targeted growth markets as north America, South Africa, France, Spain, Ireland and Britain, and the Far East. Last month its "iconic" status was acknowledged when the Bank of Ireland decided to feature a picture of the Old Bushmills Distillery on its new banknotes, placing a whole new meaning to the phrase, "publicity you couldn't buy".

In business jargon "icon" means a globally recognisable company. Only two come to mind in Northern Ireland, Bushmills whiskey and Belleek china. Harland and Wolff don't make ships any more in Belfast.

Last week saw the retirement of Billy Chambers who has been with Bushmills for 43 years. In his farewell speech to the 120 staff in the company, and with Donoghue and Egan in the room, he described Bushmills as the "Oxford of distilling where people come to learn about whiskey" - making a lightly-barbed point to the Laois man and Glaswegian but also reflecting what Donoghue and Egan say is a great local commitment to and pride in the 400-year-old product.