Tags: A Flavour of the Future, Economic Growth, Exports

The Irish food and drink sector has always been very strong globally and continues to grow. It has been said that of all the sectors, this is the one that will lead Ireland out of the recession. This is also the sector that lends itself best to investigating the opportunities of emerging markets such as China, Russia and Africa. Jan O’Sullivan emphasised this at the launch of the IEA top 250 report last week. She explained that the Department of Foreign Affairs is working to build networks with Irish embassies in a bid to grow local knowledge of global markets and opportunities. Minister O’Sullivan also said that the DFA is establishing an ‘Exports Trade Council’ which will hold its first meeting in Autumn this year. If you want to find out more about the new Exports Trade Council, you can watch Minister O’Sullivan’s speech in our exclusive videos section. Just read more

Tags: A Flavour of the Future, Agri-Food companies, Aidan Cotter, Beef Quality Assurance Scheme, Bord Bia, IIEA Conference

Aidan Cotter CEO of Bord Bia spoke at the IIEA Agri-Food Conference about two main themes; branding and sustainable. According to Cotter, Ireland needs to build on its “green” image and demonstrate our green credentials. Ireland exports in excess of 75% of its total agricultural output and has developed global competitive advantages through its strongly grass-based farming system. The fact that an Irish farm was chosen as the McDonalds Flagship farm for beef in Europe indicates Irish farms are doing good things and can farm in a sustainable way. However, now we must go beyond green and into the heart of consumers by building a brand that consumers will have an emotional connection to. Mr. Cotter also spoke about Bord Bia's initiative to achieve accreditat  [...]
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Tags: A Flavour of the Future, Agri-Food companies, Bank of Ireland, IIEA Conference, Mark Cunningham, €200 million fund

Mark Cunningham, the Director of Business Banking at Bank of Ireland spoke at the recent IIEA Conference on the bank’s commitment to lending to and supporting business in the Agri-Food sector. In the first five months of this year, BoI Business Banking had received almost 7,000 applications for credit from those operating in the primary industries of agriculture, forestry and fishing. Mr Cunningham added that Bank of Ireland is very much open for business and 85% of all applications received were approved. Mr. Cunningham emphasised how without funding and support it wasn’t possible for companies in the Agri sector to grow and expand. Therefore, in order to give Agri-Food companies the financial assistance they needed to realise their opportunities, Mr. Cunningham announced that Bank of Ireland had set-up a €200 million fund for Agri-Food companies. read more

Tags: A Flavour of the Future, Common Agricultural Policy, IIEA, Irish Dairy Board, Irish food and drink exports, Kevin Lane

On Wednesday the RDS hosted the IIEA conference on The Challenges for Irish Agri-food in the Global Marketplace.The conference entitled “A Flavour of the Future” and speakers examined the unique set of challenges and opportunities that the Irish agri-food industry is presented with in the face of the Common Agricultural Policy championed by the EU 2020 strategy. In the next series of blog post we will give an overview some of the speakers main points and presentations. Here, we will look at Kevin Lane, CEO of the Irish Dairy Board, who spoke on the experience of the Dairy Board in emerging markets. Mr. Lane began by giving some insight into the current numbers of Irish food and drink exports, which in 2010 amounted to €7.88bn, the highest percentage of this being in beef, shee  [...]
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