Take a trip on Ray’s rollercoaster

Raymond Coyle is spending €12m building a massive wooden rollercoaster ride in Co Meath. It’s part of a €25m revamp that will bring the total investment in his Tayto Park creation to over €40m. It’s paying off for the larger-than-life business man, who started out growing potatoes. Last year, 485,000 visitors paid through the gate of his Ashbourne, Co Meath, attraction. His target for this year is 700,000 visitors.

He reckons that by adding new attractions and sending customers home happy, one million visitors per year is a realistic target. Already the park’s footprint has grown from 32 to 124 acres.

Potatoes and crisps are central to the Ray Coyle story.

“I’m 33 years here making crisps – we started off with eight people. There were some really tough times,” he says.

Along the way he staved off land repossession by famously raffling a 365-acre farm in the early 1980s. Debts of £1.2m were cleared with the proceeds. And Ray Coyle the man has recently been on his own personal rollercoaster, bouncing back from a year of treatment for throat cancer.

“Around the end of 2013 I noticed a lump. I had a biopsy and started treatment – chemo and radiation. It wasn’t pleasant, but I’ve made a full recovery. I used to say ‘this won’t put me down’, but it drained me.”

His voice, which has always been distinctive, is back to its characteristic strength.

Today, he chairs Largo Foods, the owner of Ireland’s leading crisp brand Tayto, as well as King, Hunky Dorys and many more. German firm Intersnack is now the majority shareholder in Largo Foods, while Ray Coyle remains in place as minority shareholder and chair.

The company uses 30,000t of Irish potatoes, sourced from just 11 growers.

“If you don’t have a good potato, you won’t have a good crisp,” Coyle explains.

Coyle’s Largo Foods was already contract-manufacturing Tayto crisps when it acquired the brand for €62m from C&C plc in 2006. Helped in no small part by Coyle’s legendary marketing skills, Tayto has bounced back from a low of 21% to achieve 30% market share.

Coyle was also early to spot the trend for artisan crisps. Young Tipperary farmer Ed O’Donnell was planning to build a factory and approached Ray Coyle to discuss a possible distribution deal. Instead, Coyle suggested that O’Donnell concentrate on building the brand, while Largo would contract-manufacture and distribute his crisps. It has worked exceptionally well for both sides, with O’Donnell crisps achieving strong sales and delivering profit to both partners.

After “trying everything to make it viable”, Largo reluctantly closed its Gweedore, Co Donegal, factory last year, with production consolidated in Ashbourne. Is there any fear that Intersnack will close the gates in Co Meath and make Tayto elsewhere?

“They will never move – the Irish heritage is really strong. Intersnack are 180 years in business, and are making crisps for 45 years.”

Family

His son Charles is involved in the Tayto Park business, while his daughter Natalya is studying for a degree and preparing to compete in the pentathlon at the Olympics.

At 62, Coyle has new interests on top of the park. He has invested in a healthy tea drink product, SynerChi, with Laura Murphy. Even this has a Tayto connection, which she explained when she came to him with the product. “My grandfather bought potatoes from you,” she explained. That was Joe “Spud” Murphy, the 1950s creator of the Tayto brand.

Ray Coyle has installed a bottling line for SynerChi at his Gweedore factory. Another business that he is involved in, Natasha’s Living Foods, is also moving some production into this plant.

Back in 2008, I joined Ray Coyle at his factory in Donegal and recall how he presented maps showing his ambitious plans for Tayto Park. Looking back now, he comments: “People thought I was mad.” He ploughed on through the deep recession but never doubted his vision for a park with attractions for all ages.

Despite the challenges, the park opened in November 2010 and has gone from strength to strength.

Passionate

He is passionate about creating employment for young people from the hinterland – Tayto Park employs 370 at the summer peak, with 55 full-time staff employed all year round.

Having bought adjoining land, he is revamping the park, with a roundabout to ease traffic congestion, as well as new entrance stiles to avoid delays at arrival.

“If a park is looked after, it will continue to develop, but you have to keep it fresh – people need to see something new when they come on a return visit,” he explains.

The centrepiece of the park will be the new Cu Chulainn rollercoaster, which is costing a whopping €12m. It will take 24 people at a time for a two-and-a-half-minute surge of adrenaline. Constructed from timber by a team of experts from the US, it will be open for business in June.

Safety, he agrees, is the absolute number one issue for the park, followed by staff friendliness. Quality food at a reasonable price is also high on his agenda.

As part of the latest investment, he is building an extension to the restaurant, allowing the park to enter the wedding and corporate events market.

For the past 17 years he has kept a herd of Bison, which today numbers 240. They were bought as a marketing tool for the Hunky Dorys brand, but are now mainly used for meat production.

Animals remain central to the Tayto Park experience, but there is no doubt that activities have taken over the central role.

“Children like to see small animals, but the real growth is in activity and in the link to the factory,” he explains.

Forty per cent of visitors on their first visit will take in the factory tour, he says.

Over the course of his career, Ray Coyle went from growing potatoes for Ireland’s leading crisp brand, Tayto, to competing with them, then contract-manufacturing for them, before buying and revitalising the brand. Now he is entertaining over half a million visitors per year at his very own Tayto theme park. A fun, action-packed day in the park is probably the most accurate description of a day in the life of entrepreneur Raymond Coyle – including the rollercoaster.

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