Secret of firm's success was ability to create its own market

Cuisine de France was five years old and less than half its present size when it was boosted with a Forbairt-backed cash injection of £3.5 million.

The rationale behind the 1995 investment deal was to have an Irish company in place to satisfy the rapidly expanding demand for par-baked bread, and protect the industry from British predators. In the past two years Cuisine de France has had an annual growth rate of about 25 per cent and seems well on target to achieve a £5 million profit target by February 1st.

Ms Natasha Swords, the editor of Bakery World magazine, said yesterday that the Flour Confectioners and Bakers Association was unhappy at the investment at the time, which also included Kylemore, because of the ramifications for the industry.

But she says the success of the operation came down to the company's ability to create its own market. "It is Cuisine de France that is in every forecourt garage operation and every supermarket in the country.

"If it was not for Cuisine de France we would have an English company doing it," she said. Both of the company's founder members, Mr Ronan McNamee and Dr Pat Loughrey, worked for Batchelor's, the food processing company now owned by Northern Foods. Mr McNamee, who is from the North, worked there as a general production manager between 1983 and 1989. Coming from a baking family in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, Mr McNamee trained as a bakery technologist in Cardiff before working in the frozen food industry. He went on to work for the Buttercrust bakery in Finglas, Co Dublin, before moving to Batchelor's.

There he teamed up with the managing director, Dr Loughrey, in setting up their own business, aimed at supplying the multiples and the expanding number of convenience stores which emerged in 1980s.

Dr Loughrey, a former president of the Chamber of Commerce of Ireland, was managing director at Batchelor's from 1972 to 1987 after becoming a director in the late 1960s. He is now the non-executive chairman of the company. He has a PhD in Economics. The success of the product comes down to the flour, which is made from French wheat, and blended in France, according to Mr Michel Nguyen, of Moulbie, which has granted IAWS the licence to mill its flour in the Republic.

Mr Nguyen said that the selection and blending of wheat is a trade secret. They deal directly with the wheat growers, operating a traceability system from the certified seed to the grown plant.