Since it saw a surge in demand for its products at the start of Ireland’s nationwide lockdown, Co Offaly family business Glenisk has not only retained all its staff but also taken on new hires without having to turn to any financial support from government sources. While it continues to launch new products, the dairy foods manufacturer is about to break soil on a €3 million expansion at its HQ in Tullamore.

One could say Glenisk is bucking the trend. But then, this seems to be something it has been good at for quite some time. 

Managing Director Vincent Cleary says that he is “almost embarrassed” to say that the company has not required any business support since the onset of the coronavirus crisis. “Our business boomed in the first part of national lockdown and has been going strong since,” he says. 

“There was probably a level of panic buying at the beginning but, as more people were cooking or baking at home, our product was in demand. Our organic yogurt was up 50 percent in sales at one point, which demonstrated that customers were looking for what they perceived to be better, health-giving products.”

Cleary says that he has been chasing supply in organic milk in Ireland for 20 years and still measures the success of his business by the volume of milk it handles. That amount currently stands at around 350,000 litres of Irish organic milk per week – up 30 per cent in volume on last year. The company, which currently produces 61 different products from yoghurt to crème fraîche and goat’s milk, has seen sales grow by 20 per cent this year to date. 

Innovation has been the “lifeblood” of Glenisk since it was founded in 1985, Cleary says. “It is part of the continuous need to engage the customer, trying something new… We’ve a range coming out in September – whether the timing is ideal or not time will tell,” he says. “What research is telling us is that children up to the age of 10 are strong yogurt consumers and then there is a ten-year gap until they’re a young adult, when they are still developing but leave the category. We feel this new product may address this or at least it will stimulate a discussion in some households. It’s something we have to try. If it is going to be one of our glorious failures (which I don’t think it will be), then at least we’ll have given it our best shot.” 

Moving on from “wilderness years” as an “accidental hippy”

Giving it his “best shot” seems to have been Cleary’s modus operandi from the beginning – particularly during what he calls his “wilderness years”, when he and his wife returned to Ireland from Germany in the 1990s. He then took over the running of the business following the death of his father. The couple lived in a mobile home on a site which had no electricity, attempting to establish the business as organic in a country which, at the time, had very few organic farms. 

Does he believe he was ahead of the curve back then in envisioning a category of food which has now become very familiar to the average consumer? “I would hope that we are still aligning ourselves with changing consumer patterns although, dare I say it, initiatives that we took 20-plus years ago were, I felt, always going to be the highest standard. Fortunately, a wider population base also [now] considers organics to be top of the pile.”

Where many food producers might look to California with its high income, open-minded consumers for inspiration, Cleary has more often looked to Germany when it comes to business. “I am blown away by the Germans’ infrastructural, social and food projects – they don’t do things for the short-term. Were we before our time when we went organic? I would argue no. It was just there were a lot of people, and Ireland is still guilty of this, that were enjoying the status quo too much. They were afraid to embrace change.” 

He describes the first ten years of business as “rough and ready”. “I was filling a Ford Transit with milk churns and driving around to three farmers who were producing organically, filling the churns and racing back so we could convert it into yoghurt.” He wryly describes buying goats advertised in the Buy & Sell that were “more suited to the side of a mountain than to a commercial dairy” and becoming an accidental hippy “out of necessity”. “We had no funds and no experience. Sometimes ignorance is good because if you knew in advance the monumental task ahead of you, you might shy away from it. My wife became a prolific goat milker before we finally got the money together to pay the ESB to run the lines in.” 

“We were going nowhere fast and I had to convince my siblings that organics could suit us.”

Vincent Cleary

In hindsight, Cleary says that his father’s motivation in founding Glenisk was to add value to the milk he was producing as well as to build a business that might provide security for his 14 children with the recession of the 1980s as a backdrop. 

“He wasn’t the easiest man to get on with and I fought and left, but after the guts of seven years in Germany I returned in 1994 and made peace with him,” he says in characteristically candid fashion. “My father passed away in 1995 and we took over this very small business that had no unique proposition. We were going nowhere fast and I had to convince my siblings that organics could suit us. The first ten years was hard toil, but we are where we are today because of decisions that were made back then.” 

Cleary says that he has spent the last two decades scratching his “receding hairline” to come up with a way to convert hundreds of farms to organics in one go. “We need hundreds of farms in Ireland to come into organics so that we can produce commodity products such as organic baby food. I think ‘Ireland Inc.’ is missing a trick here.” 

He says that while he “fights constantly” with the Department of Agriculture, they are one of the few state bodies in Ireland which, he believes, support organics. “I am very disappointed with Enterprise Ireland. I feel that state agencies have let down the midlands and continue to let down the midlands,” he says. “I don’t mean to play the victim here but we are the forgotten child of Ireland. I could go back 33 years to my father’s time when the IDA let him down and we’ve been let down ever since.” 

Doubling in size with new investment

The Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine has provided some grant funding towards the business’s ambitious capital expenditure programme, which will see the Glenisk manufacturing facility double in size: “We have had planning permission since towards the end of last year. We had hoped to start building earlier this year but, like everything else, coronavirus got in the way of that. We are hoping to break soil in September and will be building for six months.” 

In terms of the move towards organics, Cleary says that he has often been a lone voice at agricultural committee meetings over the years. While he believes there is resistance to change, he also says that there does appear to be a positive momentum building – particularly among young, professional farmers who are looking at organics as a viable alternative to “squeezing every last cow onto their farm”. 

“If a farmer is doing their job correctly (and a farmer who has converted to organics usually has a long-term view), organic farming is one of the most profitable types of farming in Ireland despite its constraints, because it is an extensive form of farming as opposed to an intensive form. What we hope is that this farmer will demonstrate in his locality that organics is a viable alternative and invariably we get one or two farmers in the area who go into organics themselves. Is it a revolution? No. It is an evolution.” 

Over the past 20 years Cleary has also witnessed an evolution in consumer tastes in Ireland. If the idea of organic yogurt is pretty mainstream, management at Glenisk now feel that the Irish consumer is also ready for their latest product – quark – which launched in August. While the company has had the capability to make this high-protein product for quite some time, the recent introduction of quark into Ireland by international competitors seems to have encouraged Glenisk to market their own version of product. 

Cleary believes that consumers in Ireland are now ready to embrace products such as quark or kefir which may, in the past, have been considered unusual or niche. A lot of this demand is centred around changing lifestyles. “There are consumers in Ireland that are shopping on a budget and shopping within their constraints. At the same time there is also a consumer for whom food has become a topic of conversation – they are educating themselves online, [the food they eat] ties in with their pilates or yoga, they want cleaner labelling, real fruit, higher protein…” 

Some customers, however, are still resistant to change as Cleary recently found out when the company launched a carbon neutral carton for its goat’s milk product. “If I could market milk in a fit-for-purpose paper bag I would,” says Cleary. “So the carton minus the screw cap was the best thing we’ve done in the past couple of years. I’m guessing the complaints still only make up around one percent of our customers, but I see it as an opportunity to have a discussion with our customers, to have a one-to-one, to explain our motivation. I accept that we are making life a little inconvenient for some people but sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture – convenience is good and fine when it is not overly impacting on the environment.” 

“Having had tough negotiations over the years with various retailers myself I know that the clock can be one’s friend or one’s enemy. Whether it’s a deal or no deal we have resigned ourselves either way.”

Vincent Cleary on Brexit

While the company takes seriously any reaction from consumers to new products or changes, there is also the issue of both Brexit and Covid-19 at hand. Cleary says that the company has resigned itself to Brexit – whatever the outcome – but is confident a deal will be struck, albeit at the last minute.

“I suspect both parties are afraid that if they sign a deal too early they’ll have left something on the table – it suits both parties to go to the wire. Having had tough negotiations over the years with various retailers myself I know that the clock can be one’s friend or one’s enemy. Whether it’s a deal or no deal we have resigned ourselves either way.” 

While other companies have struggled to retain business and staff levels as a result of coronavirus, Glenisk has taken on additional workers to spread the workload and allow staff to social distance properly. Staff members who can do their jobs from home have been encouraged to do so and visits by outside contractors such as engineers have been limited and subject to strict regulations. 

“We cannot get the cows and goats to switch off, the milk continues to flow, we have a duty to supply the market with food,” says Cleary, who lives 500 metres away from the factory. “I have been coming to work five days a week since the lockdown. I felt it was important for me to demonstrate that we are all in this together. I have been very impressed by the dedication and commitment that everyone in this company has shown – it has been humbling to me as the MD.”