A CHANCE mention of a vacant factory over dinner in Cork led to Youghal being chosen as the venue for the Kodak plant. It is understood that Mr Gerry Poshkus, now managing director of Kodak in Ireland, was searching for a suitable site, but had been unable to find one.
He was in a hurry to set up a factory making recordable compact discs for the European market, to capitalise on a rapidly growing market. Although looking in Ireland, he had been unable to find a suitable plant which could get up and running very quickly.
The night before he was to leave Ireland he was having dinner with some associates when the possibility of a vacant factory, formerly occupied by Dennison Avery, came up. Dennison, which still operates from the industrial estate in Youghal, used to make floppy discs in the factory.
A quick phone call and a site visit was arranged for very early the following morning, before Mr Poshkus left for the US on a 9 a.m. flight.
The IDA had been trying to woo Kodak for years. The company, regarded as a blue chip manufacturer, has several operations in Europe, but this factory is the first of its kind in Europe. It will manufacture recordable compact discs for the European market.
It took several visits from Kodak and meetings in the US with IDA officials to clinch the initial deal which was for 250 jobs. Now the company's expansion will mean 610 jobs for an area in need of employment.
An added factor which helped the IDA was that Mr George Fisher, chairman and chief executive of Eastman Kodak, used to work in Motorola. That company employs 1,500 people in Ireland.
Mr Fisher was familiar with operations here and was "very well disposed towards Ireland", said one source.
Mr Poshkus told The Irish Times yesterday several factors influenced Kodak to locate here, including good tax concessions - 10 per cent corporate manufacturing tax compared to 38 and 45 per cent in other countries. He said Cork was a good location because, if the company had been in Dublin or Limerick it would be competing for staff with firms such as Dell, Intel and IBM.
Ironically, it was the fact that such leading names in technology are already located in Ireland which also helped sway Kodak, according to Mr Henry Petit, Kodak's manager in charge of European operations.
Mr Petit did not rule out a further expansion in the workforce. "This market is growing incredibly quickly," he said. "In 1992, 500,000 CD Rom discs were sold. This grew to 60 million last year and is estimated to grow to 100-300 million in the next few years."
For IDA Ireland winning this project means that Ireland's profile becomes even higher in the US. American firms account for 70 per cent of all overseas manufacturing in Ireland.
It also represents the third project which the IDA has won for Ireland from Kodak within the past 12 months.
