CATEGORY: International: The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, now in its 12th year, aims to recognise and acclaim Ireland's entrepreneurs. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year is run in association with The Irish Times, RTÉ, Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland, Invest Northern Ireland, Trinity Business School and Newstalk. Eight companies have been chosen in each of the three categories: international, industry and Emerging. Next week will feature the next four in the International category. The winner will be announced at a televised awards ceremony on Thursday, October 22nd.
Nominee: Cathal Gaffney, Brown Bag films.
ARMED ONLY with enthusiasm, an idea for a television series and a £2,000 bank loan guaranteed by their parents, Cathal Gaffney and Darragh O’Connell, two animation graduates, established Brown Bag Films in 1994.
Their idea became a reality and the television series Peig was produced and aired on RTÉ, launching their reputation for producing original, character-based animation.
Over the past 15 years, the company has grown steadily and organically from two staff and a turnover of £45,000 in year one, to now employing more than 50 full-time staff with a turnover of almost €9 million with offices in both Smithfield, Dublin, and Toronto, Canada.
Brown Bag is probably best known in Ireland for its short film Give Up Yer Aul Sins which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002. The company continues to create award-winning short films and television series and has established a television commercial division producing work for Irish and international clients. Having witnessed the transition from “analogue” to “digital” production, Gaffney, chief executive of the company, says he has absolutely no nostalgia for the way things were back then and can’t wait for new technology to get faster and simpler.
Product/Service
Ninety per cent of Brown Bag’s business is export based and other successful programmes include Cat Little’s Wobblyland for HIT Entertainment/ Nickelodeon UK and I’m an Animal for RTÉ/IFB which has sold to over 160 countries worldwide. Brown Bag is currently in the final stages of production with the 52-part series Noddy in Toyland for Chorion, which has started to air on Five UK and TF1 France.
Its most recent Ifta-winning short film Granny O’Grimm has gone on to collect 20 awards at international film festivals. The company has also established key international alliances, and outsources elements of larger productions to studios in Seoul, Korea, and Mumbai, India, using the internet to transfer terabytes of animation every week. The new custom-designed animation studio in Smithfield Market is the only high-definition computer animation studio in Ireland with vertically integrated picture and audio post-production.
Customers:
Brown Bag produces programmes that are watched by and engage millions of children worldwide. Its busy commercials division has produced jobs for clients such as Berocca Boost, National Lottery and Uniflu, as well as a pop video for Oasis.
What advice would you give an entrepreneurs starting out today?
Keep your fixed costs as low as possible and try and remain as agile as possible. The market is changing fast so be prepared to change your business plan as required. And importantly, try and surround yourself with brilliant people who are better than you are.
What motivates you to succeed?
Our mission statement reads “Brown Bag Films strives to be among the best animation studios in the world, producing evergreen programmes that engage children’s audiences worldwide.”
Has your Irishness contributed to your success?
It is impossible for us to build a business on the Irish market alone so we have always had to look overseas for work.
Internationally, the Irish animation sector is highly regarded and there is a strong network and unity among the studios here which doesn’t seem to exist to the same extent in other territories.
Nominee: Barry McCleary, Megazyme.
BARRY McCLEARY is founder of Megazyme, a research-based biochemical company that develops and supplies diagnostic test kits to the food, feed, fermentation, wine and dairy industries. The company was founded in 1988 in Sydney, Australia, and in 1996 relocated to Bray, Co Wicklow, where it constructed a purpose-built research facility in the IDA park.
Megazyme grew out of the recognition by McCleary that there was a need for improved analytical test methods for the measurement of the carbohydrates and enzymes in cereal grains that dictate their quality for use in the brewing, baking, and animal feeds industries. With the aid of molecular biology capabilities, this vision extended into the wine, food and dairy industries in 2004, and is now developing to meet the needs of the developing biofuels industry. More than 90 per cent of the products supplied by Megazyme have been researched and developed within the company, and in many cases, Megazyme is the sole world manufacturer. Seven of the test methods developed by the company are now world standard procedures and the very first test kit developed by McCleary, for the measurement of the fibre in oats that confer health benefits, is still the world standard after 20 years. In 2008, sales increased by 25 per cent, and McCleary says they look set to do record same growth this year. The company employs 23.
Products
Megazyme provides test kits and reagents to allow the measurement of compounds that affect food quality. The kits measure sugars, starches and dietary fibre, organic acids, amino acids and enzymes. The kits are used in all food and beverage industries, including baking, wine brewing, animal feed and dairy.
Customers
Megazyme exports 98 per cent of its products to over 40 countries, either directly or through a network of distributors. Ninety-five per cent of the business is online.
Customers include most of the blue chip food, beverage and food ingredient companies including Kellogg’s, Kraft, Heinz, Guinness, Unilever, Kerry Bioproducts, Fosters Group, Hardy’s wines, Moet and Chandon, DSM, Danisco and Novozymes.
What vision prompted you to start up in business?
I saw a need for improved analytical methods for the measurement of carbohydrates and enzymes in cereal grains and the derived food products. These carbohydrates and enzymes dictate how well the particular cereal product will perform in the final food product, eg bread, beer and animal feed.
What motivates you to succeed?
I absolutely love the work I do. I feel that the work that I and my company do is of value to the various industries we serve. I enjoy any challenge and the opportunity to take up the challenge. Some projects we have were solved in just months, whereas others have spanned over a decade. It is great to see solutions develop for problems that have been there for years, and problems that nobody else has yet solved.
What is the best business advice you ever received?
Become totally independent in regard to raw materials. I was advised to take control of this by manufacturing all key components in house. I have followed this advice, and we manufacture greater than 90 per cent of what we sell.
Nominee: Hugh O'Donnell. Kentz.
SINCE 2000 Hugh O’Donnell has led Kentz, a global engineering specialist solutions provider, which serves a blue chip client base primarily in the oil and gas, petrochemical and mining and metals sectors. He has been instrumental in building Kentz in to the global business it is today, with a backlog of over $1 billion (€1.4 billion) and a bidding pipeline for new projects of $2.15 billion.
In 2008 O’Donnell led Kentz through a major milestone in the company’s history when it listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, raising approximately £63.7 million (€72.4 million). From relatively humble beginnings as an electrical contractor founded in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Kentz has developed into a truly international company with operations in 23 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait in the Middle East, Northern Alberta, Canada, North West Australia, Sakhalin Island in Far East Russia, Mozambique off the coast of Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.
The Irish roots still run deep in the management and culture of the company which employs over 10,500 people across 35 nationalities. In the year ending December 2008 the company generated revenues of $643.4 million and profit before tax of $40.7 million – a position of financial strength, says O’Donnell, that gives management great confidence to ride out the current economic downturn and for a very bright future.
Product /Service
Kentz’s three main business lines are: specialist engineering, procurement and construction (EPC); construction; and technical support services. It has a proven track record of delivering mechanical, electrical, controls and instrumentation engineering, construction and management services in some of the most remote locations on earth.
Customer
Its clients include some of the largest companies in the world, such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Rio Tinto, Fluor, Saudi Aramco, Qatar Petroleum and Linde.
Describe your progression from start-up to current status?
I joined Kentz as a project engineer in 1991 hoping to work my way back home having been in South Africa for four years. It didn’t work out that way – I set up mechanical and maintenance businesses for Kentz there before being appointed general manager then managing director of Kentz Southern Africa.
I then went on to become group chief executive in 2000.
What are the biggest challenges you face now?
The biggest challenges right now are overwhelmingly factors external to our business: global economic turbulence, the oil price and a slowdown in activity in the sector. Fortunately, our breadth of clients and diversity of operations along with our financial strength positions us strongly to ride out the current economic downturn and emerge stronger than ever.
What is your biggest business achievement?
Leading Kentz through the IPO process, during very volatile markets, has been my biggest achievement at Kentz.
Despite ongoing uncertainty in the global equity markets there was significant interest and demand from investors. The IPO was particularly important for Kentz as it allowed for the management group to take a substantial shareholding and be part of the future growth of the company.
Nominee: Kevin O'Leary, Qumas.
QUMAS WAS co-founded by Kevin O’Leary in 1994 in Cork, and is now a leader in enterprise regulatory compliance solutions with more than 250 global customer deployments and many years experience in highly regulated industries.
The Qumas Compliance Solution, O’Leary explains, approaches regulatory compliance as a business benefit, not as a necessary evil. By combining document and process management in one integrated solution, Qumas reduces the amount of time and money organisations need to spend on sourcing, implementing and managing regulatory compliance solutions. O’Leary says his biggest business achievement is creating a strong and very successful presence in the US from a green-field start with very little funding, to a position where we are a well-recognised and respected brand in the life sciences industry.
Today, Qumas contributes over €2.5 million in wages to the Irish economy through its RD centre in Cork. It is a profitable company, privately held, and growing at a rate of 30 per cent a year. With over 80 per cent of Qumas clients based in the USA, Qumas continues to raise the profile of Ireland abroad, and to reinforce Ireland’s position as a centre of excellence and expertise for many sectors.
Product/Service:
Qumas delivers a closed-loop compliance model that standardises and integrates the common elements of compliance tasks across the organisation. Enterprises are able effectively to converge all of their compliance programmes onto a single platform, radically reducing the cost of compliance and creating competitive advantage. Its solutions ensure corporate compliance with the full spectrum of global regulations.
Customers:
The company works with global leaders in the life sciences (pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology) and financial services sectors, including five of the top 10 global life sciences companies as well as financial giants such as Fidelity and Bank of America.
What vision prompted you to start up in business?
I spent several years working with large ERP systems and by 1994 was conscious that there was plenty of existing software systems that dealt with the operational side of life sciences companies. However, there was a large gap in the area of enterprise compliance management.
We knew that this gap was both global and valuable in the long term. Therefore, we targeted this gap from the start, with a view to building an international company based in Ireland.
What are the biggest challenges you face now?
Obviously the global economic climate is a challenge, though the life sciences sector remains stable. Breaking into other sectors is the key to growth, and many of these sectors are in turmoil.
We have acquired global leaders in financial services as clients, such as Fidelity and Bank of America. By the end of 2009 we plan to have new clients in several additional verticals.
How do you recharge your batteries?
My wife and I take our three kids to Schull in west Cork as often as possible throughout the year.
If we can’t make the trip to Schull, I’ll unwind with a game of hockey or golf at the weekend. I’m also heavily involved with my kids’ school, which provides a complete change of environment.
