From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here
From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here
From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here
Think of the Irish heartlands in the United States and the mind will automatically focus on those centres where the Celtic footprint is traditionally greatest — New York, Boston, San Francisco.
Over the past 200 years, the Irish experience in America has seen the tricolour fly in major cities as well as hundreds of smaller locales around the vast continent — some much less well known than others.
Take, for instance, the Massachusetts town with an unusual name — Scituate. Unusual though its moniker may be, there’s no disputing the Irish credentials of this picturesque coastal town near the tip of Cape Cod — a place officially designated as “the most Irish town in America”.
Data from the 2010 US census found that the Massachusetts town is home to a higher concentration of people who trace their heritage to Ireland than any other place in the United States. Founded in the 17th century, Scituate’s status as an Irish enclave began following the Famine and the subsequent enormous emigration to America.
Legend has it that a fisherman named Daniel Ward discovered carrageenan — otherwise known as Irish moss — growing beneath the rocks along the town’s shoreline.
A new industry was born, and ‘Irish mossing’ became a thriving business, used in a variety of products from beer to cosmetics. The red algae raked from the sea floor at low tide was used as a thickener in ice cream, as well as having uses in beer, wine, medicine and in calico dye manufacturing.
Mossers working at both low tides could gather as much as 1,000 pounds weight a day, spreading the seaweed on the beach to dry and packing it into crates.
A full-time job for Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century, one of them famously declared: “It’s a great farm we have out there. We don’t have to plow [sic] it or plant it, but it gives us four crops a season.”
While the industry did eventually die out, it did leave the legacy of creating ‘the Irish Riviera’ in nearby towns like Quincy, Randolph, Marshfield, Weymouth and Kingston.
After the second world war the migration continued right up to the ’60s as returning GIs from Boston, Hyde Park and Dorchester moved to the South Shore suburbs. Today the Irish Riviera proudly displays its Irish lineage with flags, Catholic churches and schools, pubs, restaurants and bakeries.
In 2016, Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr Declan Hurley together with the chief executive of Cork County Council, Tim Lucey, signed a formal twinning agreement with representatives of Scituate.
“Scituate Harbour is a hive of marine activities much like many west Cork towns such as Schull and Baltimore,” Mayor Hurley said.
“Likewise, with our Taste of West Cork and Scituate’s annual restaurant week, we both showcase all our region has to offer in food and food tourism. There are huge opportunities for us to share ideas, food producer exchanges and marine tourism.”
Tim Lucy noted how the twinning was a natural progression for west Cork and Scituate:
Following on from a friendship pact, this twinning will develop permanent ties between our communities from a tourism, cultural and educational perspective and is one which I am confident will be mutually beneficial.
Scituate Select Chair, Maura Curran, added: “Scituate already has deep bonds of affection for Ireland and this agreement will only serve to deepen and strengthen those bonds.
“The similarities between Scituate and Cork County and west Cork make this twinning agreement a natural fit and we look forward to seeing the positive results of this agreement come to fruition.”
Ireland’s capital city has, like a fine wine, travelled well — in fact there are six of them across the USA.
Dublin, Pennsylvania, is a town with a population of 2,120 — of which 474 are Irish Americans — which accounts for 20% of the total.
Dublin, Virginia, is 19% Irish American, with some 507 the 2,665 population claiming Irish ancestry.
Dublin, Ohio, is a Midwest town of 43,224, with 6,187 claiming ancestry in the ‘Auld Sod’ — 14%. It also hosts the Dublin Irish Festival, attended by more than 100,000 people each year — one of the largest celebrations of Irish American culture in North USA.
In the Lone Star state, Dublin, Texas, has an 11% Irish American population out of 3,671 residents, and was designated it the official Irish Capital of the Lone Star State by Governor Rick Perry in 2005.
On the West Coast, the Californian town of Dublin is a popular suburb of San Francisco, with a population of 52,063 — of which 4,172 are Irish Americans, making up 8%.
And last, but not least, there’s Dublin, Georgia, way down South. Out of a population of 16,181, some 453 are Irish — almost 3%. Rather interestingly, the town merited a mention in James Joyce’s celebrated novel, Finnegan’s Wake.
Today, more than 155,000 people are directly employed in over 700 US firms in Ireland, and which also indirectly support a further 100,000 jobs in the Irish economy, in total accounting for 20% of employment.
Collectively US investment in Ireland amounts to $387bn, an increase of 16% from 2015.
The Industrial Development Authority of Ireland won more than 237 overseas investments in 2017, creating almost 19,851 new jobs. US firms remain the largest source of new investment, and investment in 2017 accounted for 67% of all foreign direct investment in Ireland.
In a geographical spread that encompasses much of the country, the US multinational footprint stretches from Dublin to Galway, Wexford to Mayo and Cork to Donegal.
Ireland is the EU gateway for many US firms accessing European and international markets. Ireland, which represents just 1% of the European economy, attracted 12.1% of all US FDI investment to Europe in 2016.
US companies are also responsible for major social benefits in their local communities and throughout Ireland through providing innovative and inclusive social impact programmes and other activities.
In 2015 alone, employees of US companies contributed over 600,000 work supported volunteer hours to 7,300 CSR projects.
From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here
Tyndall National Institute in Cork is leading a new international consortium which will provide Europe with state-of-the-art photonics infrastructure.
The value of the photonics market is expected to be worth over €615bn by 2020 and with Europe’s share of the production technology market currently at 55%, Tyndall’s new consortium PIXAPP will play a critical role in future economic development.
Photonics offers a new level of speed and usage capacity far above traditional technologies which in many cases are nearing capacity.
It uses light in tiny Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) microchips rather than electrons to perform a wide variety of functions including high-speed communication over fibre optic cables, sensing and imaging for medical devices and the control of self-driving cars.
PIXAPP director and head of Photonics Packaging Research at Tyndall National Institute, Prof Peter O’Brien, said: “The PIXAPP consortium has an unmatched record of excellence in delivering many ‘world firsts’ in PICs. Packaging PICs can represent up to 80% of the cost of photonic components so it is a critical area for industry.
“In the past it has been very expensive to manufacture high volumes of PICs and more expensive and challenging again to package them, where packaging involves connecting these tiny microchips to the real world.
"This is creating a bottleneck in production, which is impacting the potential for growth in the photonics industry.”
Prof O’Brien said that the Tyndall-led PIXAPP consortium received €13.8 million in funding from the EU and this funding has enabled Tyndall to build a truly global footprint — “enabling us to expand not only across Europe but also in the US.
We now have industrial research projects with leading US companies in communications, medical devices, automotive, energy and security.
“We were hugely excited recently to demonstrate a novel medical device we developed in collaboration with Medtronic which was tested in a Paris hospital ….. a device used to detect early stage cardio-vascular disease so instead of patients having to visit a large hospital or clinical laboratory, they can be tested at their local doctor’s surgery.
"All the critical parts of this compact medical device have been miniaturised onto a tiny millimeter-scale photonic chip, replacing the large and very expensive equipment used today.”
Tyndall, he says, has strong research collaborations in photonics with some of the top universities and institutes in the US including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University in New York, University of California in Berkeley, University of Arizona and the California Institute of Technology.
Prof O’Brien is a visiting scientist at Columbia University, while he is also an Adjunct Professor at the Optical Sciences Centre based at The University of Arizona. He is excited about plans going forward.
“Universities and industry in the US like to collaborate with us because we have a very unique capability in that we accelerate research from the laboratory to real-world applications, so for instance researchers might be developing a new photonic microchip and with our capabilities — i.e. component integration and packaging, we can design their devices into new applications so for example taking a microchip designed for sensing and integrating it onto a catheter so it can be used for in-body diagnostics such cardio-vascular disease monitoring.”
Tyndall received €4.1m in Destructive Technologies Innovation Funding via the Department of Business, Enterprise & Innovation.
“Our goal is to expand photonic manufacturing capabilities in Ireland, building on the significant investments already made in photonics research through agencies such as Science Foundation Ireland who funded the Irish Photonics Integration Centre,” said Prof O’Brien.
“Our goal is to establish new photonic manufacturing companies in Ireland and support companies who want to use photonics in their new products, especially medical devices.
"To help achieve this goal, we have a leading German company coming to Tyndall this year. ficonTEC are a global leader in advanced photonic packaging equipment.
Together, we will develop the next generation of robotic photonic manufacturing equipment, ensuring Ireland and Europe maintains its leading position in photonics research and advanced manufacturing.
“We are extremely grateful to the Irish Government for this funding and confident it will provide a significant return on investment.
"We also plan to train and educate the photonics workforce of the future, creating a unique laboratory-based training programme which will be a game-changer not only for the European photonics industry but also global photonics”.
Tyndall are also collaborating with a $600m consortium in the US called the American Institute for Manufacturing in Photonics, including technology roadmapping.
Peter says networking is key to success and Tyndall is involved in organising conferences and exhibits in the US for example Peter and his team are attending one of the largest Photonics Conferences in the World ‘Photonics West’ in San Francisco this month.
“We have organised an evening reception at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in order to talk about Tyndall and the work that we do and we will also hold a breakfast meeting where we invite company CEOs and CTOs.
"We also have a one-day technology workshop in San Diego in March on Building the Supply Chain for Photonics Manufacturing and that again coincides with another global conference ‘The Optical Fibre Conference’.
We organise invited talks in the US throughout the year and that is extremely important as Science Foundation Ireland and Tyndall have long-standing relationships in the US and it is important to visit partners at their main research centres or headquarters to discuss new opportunities.
Peter previously worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in the US developing sensors for spacecraft and very sensitive deep-space telescopes.
A physics graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he completed a Masters in Engineering and PhD in Physics at UCC before travelling to Caltech in the US.
He returned to Cork where his wife Siobhan is from and together they founded a Photonics Company which they sold in 2009 before Peter joined Tyndall.
“Tyndall works closely with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. Ireland is fast becoming a very attractive location to perform advanced research and transfer this research to manufacturing, creating new high-value products which improve our lives.
From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here
Áilín Quinlan hears why Ornua’s Kerrygold brand is enjoying such success in the US and globally
With its world-renowned Kerrygold butter and Dubliner cheese stocked by the top US retailers, rated amongst the highest-selling products in their categories in the States and praised by celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker, one might forgive Iarlaith Smyth for enjoying even the smallest smidgen of complacency.
But no. The Mayo-born President of Ornua Foods in North and Latin America isn’t about to allow as much as a blade of grass to grow beneath his busy feet.
Kerrygold in the US is a success story he acknowledges, but one that required hard work, vision and time.
A golden tale it certainly is, with Kerrygold butter holding the Number Two slot in the US butter market, second only to the iconic Land O’Lakes brand, while within the Speciality Cheddar range the seven-ounce block of Kerrygold’s Dubliner cheese holds the prized number one position in terms of Shop Keeping Units (SKUs) in the States.
The US market has always been tough nut to crack, so it’s been a hard slog to get the brand to where it is today — and Smyth is absolutely determined to keep that growth steady.
“There’s great energy and enthusiasm about the brand here,” he explains. “We’re investing in the brand and sustainable long-term growth. We want to continue with the double digit expansion that we have enjoyed since 2006.”
And while these various Kerrygold products are, he acknowledges, “available in every retailer that you would want to be listed in — Costco, Wholefoods, Walmart, Trader Joe’s Kroger and Publix for example,” it’s a success, as he has already pointed out that has taken time to build — and one which requires significant and ongoing management and investment.
Ornua, to put it simply, is a dairy cooperative, which markets and sells dairy products on behalf of its members; Irish dairy processors and Irish dairy farmers.
Previously the Irish Dairy Board, the co-operative is Ireland’s largest exporter of Irish dairy products has €2 billion in revenue and employs some 2,300 staff and 14 factories around the globe. Its products are in more than 110 markets from the USA, the UK and Germany to Africa, Asia and Saudi Arabia.
The headquarters of Ornua’s US, Canada and Latin America is based in Evanston, outside Chicago, from where Smyth is speaking to the Irish Examiner.
Ornua’s US team totals about 60 people, around half of whom are based in Evanston — the rest are spread across a range of territories in the US.
“We’ve been in the USA since 1990 but it was in 1998 when we launched Dubliner Cheese, and in 1999 when we launched Kerrygold butter that things really took off,” Smyth explains.
Over the years, the organisation has used a successful mix of marketing strategies to promote its products to US consumers — it still does.
However, the growing desire by US consumers for sustainably created products — milk from Irish grass-fed cattle — and the superb taste that comes with the products made from that milk, has held enormous benefits for Ornua.
Between 1999 and 2005 the company focused in the deli speciality area, promoting its brand through store-based demos and tasting.
From about 2006 there was a noticeable shift by consumers away from margarine and towards butter and high-end cheese.
The group started advertising in the print media, primarily in culinary magazines and, from about 2011 Kerrygold products in the US entered a state of extremely rapid growth.
“Butter was now a good word and Kerrygold was in a really good position in terms of its image of sustainable grass fed product,” Smyth explains.
Comprehensive market research resulted in successful consumer-led new products such as a premium American-style ‘stick’ of Kerrygold butter — US-made butter is generally sold in this form — as well as a spreadable form of Dubliner cheese.
Exploiting the opportunities offered by social media was another inevitable route, while the brand was also strongly promoted on TV — first on local and regional channels and later via the continent’s huge cable networks.
“We hooked in with the cooking channels and the food, home and gardening networks, as we could go national by focusing on the cable channels.
“That really helped us with our category growth,” Iarlaith Smyth recalls, while adding that the group also widened its target market to encompass, not just the high-income households and niche food marketers but food lovers of all kinds across the board.
By 2016 Kerrygold butter was so popular that the objective was to nudge it to the Number Two highest selling butter in the USA — this was achieved — while the group maintained its Number One slot in terms of speciality cheddar. Within this category, the Kerrygold Dubliner 7oz block is the number one selling SKU (Shop Keeping Unit) in the USA.
The brand is very strongly promoted across all conceivable media channels: “Although TV is very effective and lets you make a big jump in terms of consumer awareness, you need the other communication routes on the spectrum,” Smyth explains. Hence Kerrygold’s TV campaigns are backed up by widespread publicity across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram Twitter as well as in the print media.
“This way you’re able to hit the TV, the personal devices and the print media so you have to have the full spectrum — it’s something we do really well.
“In terms of growth, what we’ve been doing is building our brand awareness and our household presence,” he says. This involves growing Ornua’s distribution network and expanding its range of new products with new cheeses as well as a range of new formats for butter.
We’re growing within our categories and we’re growing across a number of categories. We want Kerrygold to be a dairy ‘brand’ in the US; more than just a butter or a specialty cheese.
To this end, a shortly-to-be-released brand-new global advertising campaign punches home the message of Kerrygold’s roots by highlighting Ireland’s unique grass-fed cattle being reared on family farms:
“The campaign focuses on Irish dairy farmers and their unique grass-fed way of farming The success of Kerry gold is underpinned by Ireland’s grass-fed method of farming.
“The grass-fed product is very different to other products on the market. You really can taste and see the difference,” he says, adding that consumer base in the US has developed a deep affection for Kerrygold and its “very real, authentic and compelling story”.
This new US campaign is focused on bringing the international consumer close to the source of Kerrygold; back to the family farm and the grass-fed cattle, Iarlaith Smyth explains.
“The brand means something in terms of the co-op ethos that you are giving back to a farming family. That means something to people. We now have a very passionate and loyal following, so when people hear about Kerrygold and what it stands for they want to learn and try more,” Mr Smyth observes, adding that to this day a strong element of its marketing campaign is allowing products to be demonstrated and ‘tasted’ in stores.
“People see and taste the difference and they will buy it again and again.”
On top of all of that, the brand attracts what he terms “a huge amount” of free publicity, primarily because people “love our product and want to share information about it.”
The story of Kerrygold, he declares, is told and re-told by people of all kinds, shoppers, bloggers, culinary influencers as well as by celebrities like Kate Beckinsale and Sarah Jessica Parker.
“It’s very positive free publicity and that is because people here are so passionate about it!”
From our friends over at the : Irishexaminer.com
You can see the Full Story: Click Here