The Kerry-based business has grown from producing five loaves a day to the 26,000 a week it produces daily, writes Claire Shoesmith

What do you get if you cross a traditional Irish baker, an enthusiastic Australian chef and a German nutritionist with a background in brewing? A tricky question I know, so I will help. In this particular case, it's a healthy bread range.

While this might sound like an unlikely combination for a business venture, it seems to be working for Jerry Kiely, Ari Gardiner and Uli Schraewer. Since setting up the Lifefibre Company four years ago, they have grown the Castleisland, Co Kerry business from just five loaves a day to the 26,000 a week it produces today.

"For us it's about being innovative," says 51-year-old Kiely, who as the son of a master baker from Tipperary has a long history in the bread-making business. "First we got into it because it tasted nice, and then we found out it was healthy too. For us, this was a bonus."

In effect, the three men - and their 40 staff - have started to shake up the Irish bread market, with loaves and rolls (according to Kiely, there wasn't a decent brown roll on the market) made from natural ingredients that include unusual combinations of poppy, sunflower and sesame seeds, apricots, sultanas, carrots, linseed and oat bran.

While they claim the bread's healthy benefits are a byproduct of its taste, health did, in fact, play some part in the birth of the Lifefibre Company. About seven years ago, back home in Australia, Ari was set a challenge by his mother, who at the time was going through the menopause: to make something tasty that incorporated the large number of natural supplements she had been advised to take, such as soya and poppy and sunflower seeds.

"I came up with the recipe, Jerry gave it his special dough preparation and secret baking method, and voila - HRT bread," says Gardiner, who has been living in Ireland since 2000. While the name HRT bread has since been changed - it was considered to be misleading to the consumer - the product still exists and has a loyal fan base all over the Republic, in addition to tourists who regularly ask for the bread to be mailed out all over the world.

But that is where one problem lies for the Lifefibre Company. While the group has a strong distribution network throughout the Republic - it started out with four Spar shops and the bread is now stocked in Dunnes, Tesco and Superquinn, to name but a few of the larger retailers - it doesn't travel very well.

With a totally natural content and no preservatives, the bread has a shelf life of between eight and 12 days, depending on the fruit content. In the Republic, Kiely has the distribution system tuned to a fine art - the bread, which takes 24 hours to make because of the special (in Kiely's words "secret") way in which the seeds are prepared - is made one day and in the shops the next. Because of the longer transportation time needed to get the bread out of the country, Kiely had difficulty guaranteeing its arrival in the shops.

Still, while currently the group's focus is on the Republic, Kiely isn't ruling out a move to England or even further afield at some point in the future. However, for such an expansion to work effectively, the best option would be to open a new factory or franchise outside of Ireland.

Whether this actually happens remains to be seen, and in the meantime, the unlikely, but somewhat stereotypical bunch - the German is insistent when pointing out the nutritional benefits of all the bread's seeds, the Australian gives a very enthusiastic hard sell, while the Irish man, rather unusually, struggles to get a word in - have their work cut out keeping up with the strong growth they have set in motion.

Sales were growing quite steadily at about 20 per cent a year until last year when the Lifefibre Company came second in the National Newspapers of Ireland's inaugural Press Builds Brands initiative, winning them €750,000 worth of national advertising. The money has been spent over the course of this year, pushing the group's sales up 40 per cent.

"Our main challenge now is making sure that we can deliver enough bread to the right places at the right time as we have promised," says Kiely. "It's about getting a strong, reliable supply coming through to these places before expanding." And building these sorts of relationships with retailers is something that Kiely knows a thing or two about.

In fact, the initial distribution agreement with the Spar convenience chain came on the back of the reputation Kiely had built up with his cake business, Cameo Cakes. Since acquiring the business in 1999, Kiely has been looking to expand. "I was always trying to get into something new," he says. "I tried breads and mueslis, but nothing worked like this has."

Now the majority of Kiely's energy goes into the Lifefibre Company, which is run from the same premises as his cake business.

"That is where my heart is now," he says. And during the week, it's not just his heart that's in the business. Kiely lives in Castleisland by the factory, enabling him to dedicate as much time as possible to his work.