INTERVIEW: Glenisk boss explains how company is reborn just four months after disastrous fire

JUST four months after he saw his life's work go up in flames, Vincent Cleary and Glenisk are back in the yogurt business.

The Offaly company founded by the late Jack Cleary in Killeigh grew to become a concern which dominated the Irish organic milk and yogurt market and last year was launching on the supermarket shelves in Germany.

Everything changed on September 27 last when a fire in the plant at Newtown wrecked the entire factory and threatened the future of the company, 90 Glenisk jobs, and numerous farmer suppliers.

Glenisk pledged to retain their employees, resumed milk collections, got milk back into the shops, and vowed to rebuild the yogurt production facility.

From this week (Wednesday, February 2), two of Glenisk's yogurts will be available in stores again after a remarkably quick recovery from the ground up.

Speaking on Tuesday, Glenisk managing director Vincent Cleary recalled how he felt when the blaze broke out.

“It was one of those days where you're standing there and your life's work is going up in flames in front of you. It's hard to fathom,” he said.

As he watched two of the Glenisk products rolling off a new production line he said: “Of course we're joyous and we're elated but relief is possibly one of the emotions that's coming because we're back in business and we're back giving our customers products that are sorely missed on the shelves.

“It was important for us and our full complement of staff to get back into production as quickly as possible. And for our farmers and everybody and anybody.

“It's a brilliant day for us. Although it's a smaller version of what we had before, the machines are smaller, it's the first step back onto continuing our business, picking up our business where we had left it off on that disastrous day on September 27th.”

The yogurt section of the factory was hit worst by the fire and Glenisk decided to build a new facility.

The two pots of natural yogurt first off the production line are among the company's most popular (an organic wholemilk yogurt and an organic Greek style natural yogurt), and their immediate reintroduction this week will see Glenisk recover between 20 and 25% of its pre-fire sales.

A further roll-out will then take place. “It's going to be a series of baby steps. This is the first initial and important and critical step. And then by the end of this week we're hoping to do some low fat natural and as the weeks pass we'll be adding more to the ranges as we go. Pre-fire we had 105 different pots of everything and anything so we're starting with two so we've a long way back.”

Before September last year Glenisk were producing 500,000 pots a week. “I'd say we'll do about 100,000 pots this week,” said Mr Cleary.

Though he missed his ambitious target of getting back into production in three months, Mr Cleary is delighted with the new facility and thanked stainless steel fabricator, Kilcormac man Donal Spain, Finbarr Kelly, builder, and Mark Cahill, concrete, for their “amazing support”.

Donal Spain and his team were “back on the job” two days after Christmas in an effort to get the plant up and running.

Mr Cleary also said FBD Insurance had been with the company “every step of the way”.

The new yogurt production facility also forms part of the company's campaign to become carbon neutral.

“This is part of the baby steps, we've eliminated plastic from the packaging. Even the tray now is cardboard. We are hoping that by the time we complete our new factory that will be totally carbon neutral and free from plastic. So we've started that journey,” said Mr Cleary.

With the yogurts now returning to the Irish market, Glenisk is also now returning its attention to Germany.

A deal to supply stores there was being implemented in September when the fire broke out but the German customers quickly told Glenisk to come back when they were ready.

“We'd be confident we'll pick that up where we left it off in the coming weeks,” said Mr Cleary.

“We had just started with them pre-fire. It will be interesting to see how Germany goes because if Germany is successful that will open the door to other countries.”

Glenisk retained its workforce since the fire, no staff were laid off, all staff were paid throughout the period and many were redeployed temporarily into new roles.

Many of the staff have been with Glenisk for more than fifteen years.

“This fantastic, dedicated and skilled workforce were central to our success in becoming the top selling yogurt brand in Ireland, and are central to our recovery as we try to rebuild from scratch,” said Glenisk commercial director Emma Walls.

“Our Plan B manufacturing site is less automated and more labour intensive than our original factory. Simply put, it requires more staff to produce less yogurt. Glenisk continued to collect and pay for milk from our organic cows’ milk and goats’ milk farmers throughout. These are specialist agricultural sectors and the small family farms who produce this milk depend on Glenisk.”

Glenisk is continuing to encourage new farmers to convert to organic and see demand for organics growing.

The company also commented on the “overwhelming response” from the public with good wishes, prayers, rosaries, Masses, offers of labour, equipment, crowdfunding suggestions, “and lots of offers of pocket money from young children”.

“We asked that offers be channelled to our partner, Self Help Africa and the #OneMillionTrees climate campaign, which had been funded from sales of Glenisk yogurt up to the fire on 27 September. Thanks to the generosity of Irish people, Self Help Africa successfully reached the milestone of two million trees planted in Africa and 100,000 native trees planted in Ireland,” said Ms Walls.