It seemed like a good career move - to come to work with Seagate. John Mackey is a mechanical engineer - his job was facilities manager at the plant in Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Pat Lynch, an accountant, was Seagate's finance director.

Both have considerable experience in industry having worked for companies such as the Kerry Group and Kromberg & Schubert before joining Seagate. But their high hopes were not fulfilled. Pressure in world markets forced Seagate to retrench and the plant's closure was announced in December, less than three years after production had begun. Some 1,450 people were out of work including Mackey and Lynch who decided to strike out on their own rather than look for employment elsewhere.

"While working at Seagate we had become aware of the need for clean room laundry services," says Mackey. "It was a service we needed at Seagate and it's a service that any company with a clean room needs. Clean rooms are used in all sorts of industries from microelectronics to pharmaceuticals to medical devices and the garments worn by people working in these facilities have to be specially laundered."

Before they set up there was just one company offering this service and nobody was offering it in the Munster region. So they based themselves in Cork where they had identified a significant number of potential customers. "If companies know that a fast, reliable service is available in the local area we believe they will use it," says Mackey. "Our service also means that companies currently using disposable garments will be able to change to fabric garments which obviously have a much longer life. And this is a plus from an environmental point of view."

Microtech Cleanroom Services is now up and running in the North Point business park with Mackey, Lynch and one other employee. By the end of the year they expect to be employing 10 people. The total investment in the project is in the region of £400,000.

"We have a lot of contacts between the two of us and we've been most encouraged by the level of support we've been receiving from people in Cork," says Pat Lynch. "Seagate were also very helpful to us. They gave us the opportunity to buy equipment from the plant and we were able to get quite a lot of what we needed in this way both specialist equipment and things like office furniture and computers. This helped minimise the strain of setting up and it has allowed us to start on a professional footing right from the beginning."

CLEAN room garments have to be laundered in a clean environment with a special air ventilation system and a clean and filtered water supply. "It's quite a specialised service," says Mackey, "but I was familiar with the technology from working in companies with clean room facilities so I had a good idea of what was involved.

"I'm in charge of the operations side of the business and Pat is in charge of finance, sales and marketing. We're not afraid of hard work and we're both prepared to put in the hours and do what's necessary to get the business up and running. If that means driving the delivery van, then that's what we'll do."

Mackey's views are echoed by Lynch. "Basically we're willing to do anything to make this work. Even though it's been a demanding time for us, it's been the most gratifying few months I've had in a long while. We're both in our early forties, we have a wealth of experience between us and I think this opportunity has come at just the right time for us," he says.

"When you're younger you have the enthusiasm and energy to want to do something like this, but you don't have the experience or the maturity that goes with being that bit older. I think that's a strong point in our favour."

BOTH men have put their redundancy packages behind the venture and they have also received some assistance from the Cork Enterprise Board. "With eight kids and two mortgages between us we are fully aware of what we've taken on, but we have a sympathetic bank manager in Bank of Ireland in Blackpool who has seen the potential of what we're doing and has supported us," says Mackey. "We also have the support of our wives who have backed us all the way and our two oldest kids have been giving us a hand."

The clean room laundry is just one side of what Mackey and Lynch hope will eventually become a two-sided business. "We're also looking at the possibility of running a sub-contract manufacturing and repair business in a clean room environment," says Lynch. "In this facility we would undertake manufacturing, assembly or repairs for companies who need work done in a clean room environment and who might need extra capacity at a given time or who might need our type of service occasionally and wouldn't be able to justify the cost of setting up a full-time clean room of their own.

"We're in the throes of a feasibility study on this at the moment and it's looking very positive. We estimate that this business could generate between 50 and 100 jobs. Clean rooms are the way of the future, so demand for services such as ours will grow. It wasn't until we started researching our idea that we realised just how many clean rooms there are in Ireland. They are literally everywhere."