SAP Holdings Ltd was set up in 1971/1972 in Carbury, Co Kildare when a group of five college graduates purchased 180 acres of cut-over bog.
The company's main business activity is mature tree production with an expected turnover in excess of €30 million in 2006.
Employment has grown from 10 to 305 across production and trading. In 2005 the company's payroll bill was some €7.25 million.
Sap Holdings Ltd is made up of four divisions: Sap Nurseries Ltd, which accounts for 30 per cent of operations; Sap Landscapes Ltd, accounting for 25 per cent of operations; Sap Holland BV, accounting for 23 per cent of operations and Sap Retailing, accounting for the remainder.
Products
Ornamental trees and shrubs for horticultural wholesale, landscape and garden centre markets.
Customers
The wholesale market is made up of local authorities and large institutions such as golf courses, health boards, landscape contractors, garden centres and stud farms.
The Landscape customers include property developers, municipal authorities, landscape architects, development agencies as well as other institutions such as banks and building societies.
The company's trading house is based in Zundert on the Belgian/Dutch border where it sells and distributes €7 million of traded products from Moscow to Stockholm.
What vision prompted you to start in business?
In the 1960s, land in Ireland was used solely for low-profit food production. Indigenous horticulture was in its infancy but prospering in continental Europe. These identified opportunities needed to be grasped.
What is your biggest business achievement?
A recognition by Dublin City Council of our capabilities, which resulted in our appointment to work exclusively with them on the Millennium project of refurbishing tree planting in O'Connell St.
Express the biggest challenge you see your industry facing.
To have completed the repositioning of our production, landscape contracting and trading business to meet the challenge of a slow-down in our industry and safeguard the careers of our 305 employees.
