England is a traditional roast country. Spain is a traditional steak country. Holland buys round cuts and fish muscle. Ireland likes mince and steaks,” so says Richard Bourke, CPM manager with ABP, Cahir.

You’d know all this too if you were in Richard’s role: he is in charge of the production hall in the meat-processing plant. This is where raw meats, like beef and pork, are taken in and packaged for retail. There are nine production lines in the packing hall and Superquinn sausages are just one of the many products made here.

Richard tells me this as we are standing over a display of meat cuts presented in a variety of packaging, ready to send to countries across Europe. It’s not until you actually see all the labelling, with such a mixture of foreign languages for different countries that it hits home how export-oriented this industry is. Produce for Germany and Switzerland leaves the factory on a Friday and is on supermarket shelves there by Monday morning.

ABP, Cahir, is just one of ABP Food Group’s five sites in Ireland – and is ABP’s flagship Irish site. It offers the full 360° experience of meat processing – from the live animal to the finished retail pack – and this is what is unique about the Cahir plant.

It has an abattoir, where the animals are slaughtered; a boning hall, where they dissect the carcasses into different cuts; CPM, where they pack the product for the supermarkets; and cold storage. Next door is a state-of-art new product development (NPD) facility where the ABP team hosts retailers and presents their suggestion for new products – particularly for new seasonal lines of meat products, for example. Richard tells me next winter is already “boxed off” and they are now looking at BBQ 2018.

ABP, Cahir is the central distribution centre for the other five sites. The other ABP plants send their product to the Cahir plant and it is distributed from there – namely to supermarket depots and also to Pallas Foods, which distributes ABP produce to restaurants all over Europe. ABP supplies over 100 Michelin-starred restaurants all over Europe.

Furthermore, produce is exported to 15 countries from Cahir. The plant is a hive of activity every Friday, as hauliers from Europe collect the product.

Re-development

In 2015, ABP invested around €50m in the redevelopment of its sites at Cahir: €33.7m of this was spent on the meat-processing plant and €16.5m was spent on the construction of a new gel bones facility as part of the rendering plant. This is the only gel bone facility in the UK and Ireland and it opens up markets in the pharma sector to ABP.

The €50m redevelopment brought new machinery and additional space with it, and more jobs were created at the plant thanks to the increased production capacity.

The redevelopment couldn’t have come at a better time. Between 2006 and 2012, Co Tipperary consistently lost a greater proportion of jobs than the national average.

Between 2008 and 2009 alone, Co Tipperary lost 5,000 jobs, which was equivalent to 13.7% of its workforce. This puts into context how significant a role ABP plays in sustaining local jobs: the number of direct employees in ABP, Cahir, has risen every year since 2007.

There is much more variety in the roles in ABP, Cahir, than people might think. There are roles, for example, in environmental, CPM, HR, technical and administration. There are accountants, quality assurance technicians and engineering staff, while there are also roles in the abattoir and in IT.

“There’s an impression out there that the agri industry is [only] for agri people,” says Richard Bourke. “There’s a width, depth and breadth of opportunity to progress, to develop your own career. We want to show people the opportunity.”

You mightn’t expect, for example, that ABP hires engineers – and architects too. These professions are needed to draw plans and manage developments of ABP facilities. Simple elements such as the floor and the ceilings are very particular to the industry in terms of their design. “What’s new today is old tomorrow,” explains Richard. “What we have is best-practice.”

Supply Chain

The jobs provided by ABP, Cahir, however, are not limited to those in the plant itself. ABP, Cahir, is estimated to have indirectly created/sustained approximately 1,048 jobs in the supply chain, with an estimated contribution of €111m to the Irish economy.

These stats sound great, but what do they really mean? How does ABP, Cahir, contribute so much to the local economy?

Roles supported locally include meat hauliers, livestock hauliers and cattle agents. Berendsen Ireland does the plant’s laundry. While 12 vets, who have their own practices, do temporary shifts in the plant. The catering is privately run; there are gardeners; and three people clean the windows once a month. Daltons (a local haulage service), Buttimer Engineering and Cahir Engineering are just some of the local businesses whose services are engaged by ABP Ireland.

Construction

The €50m redevelopment also brought economic activity to the local area in its construction alone, as this phase created jobs. In fact, this phase is estimated to have supported approximately almost 500 total job years of employment, contributing close to €29m to the Irish economy.

Construction-based employees, for the most part, lived locally for the duration of the project, meaning local accommodation and retail services benefited from the additional spend.

Of course, outside of the temporary additional economic activity that came to the town with the redevelopment, the full-time jobs created by the plant see a high demand for accommodation in the town generally.

“There’s not a room to rent in Cahir,” says Richard Bourke – a remark more usually made about an urban centre like Dublin rather than a rural town. He also contends every house in the Rosemount Estate in the town is rented by someone working in ABP.

There’s no doubt ABP is playing a key role in maintaining the economic fabric of south Tipperary.

Many staff members have been with the plant between 25 and 30 years, so not only is the ABP, Cahir, facility providing jobs, but it is providing sustainable, high-quality roles that people are happy to stay in – and commute to the town for in the first place.

The role played by ABP, Cahir, and other agricultural employers like it, located all over rural Ireland needs to given more acknowledgment – from within the agricultural industry itself and on a broader level.

The statistics used in this article were taken from a report by KPMG in conjunction with Oxford Economics. The report was commissioned by ABP Food Group to undertake a high level economic impact assessment of their investment and ongoing operations in the meat processing and rendering plants at Cahir, Co Tipperary.