News
#MEW2017 Business Conference & Expo
The headline event of Meath Enterprise Week was #MEW2017 Business Conference & Expo in the Knightsbrook Hotel, Trim. Kicking off good and early at 8.30am we started the day with a welcome from Meath County Council Caothairleach Cllr. Gerry O’Connor before MC for the day Brian Purcell took to the stage. Panel 1 of the day was “Maximising opportunities for SMEs through Collaboration and Shared Learning” and to discuss this we welcomed Gavin Duffy – Gavin Duffy & Ass., Cathal Dolan – Gizagig, Shane Holland – Shane Holland Design and Keith Finglas – Innovation Delivery. A lively discussion ensued, and some excellent points were raised by all speakers from their different points of view. Shane Holland described how he started and the challenges that he has faced and how he believes it is through collaboration that his business has prospered and grown. The ever-charismatic Gavin Duffy shared some excellent insights into being successful in business recommending to ask for help when needed as well as to always be looking for the problems and then finding the solutions.
We then welcomed Minister Damien English TD to discuss what our current government is doing for enterprise development. He congratulated Meath Enterprise on their continued hard work at promoting and developing enterprise in the region and their continued collaborations with local authorities and state agencies into driving enterprise growth in Meath.
Before we began our second panel we announced the winners of our Schools Enterprise Competition. The entrants in this year’s event had the opportunity to pitch for the prize at a “Dragons Den” style event the previous week and the standard of the entries blew the judges away. As this was a competition only three could win however each group or student was welcomed onto the stage to receive their prize/participation medal. The overall winner was EZtopup and the team behind EZtopup was Aibhen Casserly, Sean Kendal, James Fagan, Aaron Rafferty & Seanog O’Foley of St.Pats Classical School. Jomana Hosny of Dunshauglin Community College secured 2nd place with her Easi Stirrup Invention and Junior Cert Grinds Navan established by Ryan Baxter, Joe Fitzgerald & Evan O’Sullivan of St.Pats Classical School scooped 3rd place. Gavin Duffy along with Cllr. Gerry O’Connor presented the students with their awards and hopefully inspired them to continue working on their businesses! Huge congratulations to all the students who took part and to their teachers who worked so hard preparing them.
Panel 2 was next up, and it focused on Channels to market – finding the right partners and for this panel we welcomed John Cunningham – Epicom Foods, Christian McManus – Foro International, Annie Madden – Fenu Health and Christine Liu – Ireland-China Institute. This panel of experts held nothing back as they took us through the challenges they faced in finding the right partners in business. John shared some of his vast experiences on finding a partner in China and Annie shared with us the inspirational story of the conception and development of her business Fenuhealth informing us that it is now sold in 14 countries and 5 continents! Amazingly Annie shared that herself and her business partner sister Kate manage to find time to run the business from their phones on the commute to and from school!
Driving Sustainable economic growth in the regions was the topic for our last panel before lunch and we welcomed Gary O’Meara- Meath Enterprise, Noel Moran – eComm, Michael Fox – Aryzta and Brian Colgan – SBCI to discuss the topic. An excellent discussion ensued with each speaker sharing fascinating insights into economic growth in the regions and Noel Moran sharing with us the exciting news of his company’s expansion plans in Navan Co. Meath and his hope to provide significant employment opportunities in the near future. Gary O’Meara took us through the developments of the Boyne Valley Food Innovation District and its plans to attract major investment to the region through scaling food companies for international contracts.
Before we broke for lunch we were delighted to present Hugh Maguire with an award in recognition of his huge achievement in winning the Great Taste Supreme Champion Award in London earlier on this year. He shared with us briefly the significance of winning such an award and his plans to capitalise on it.
Lunch featured a beautiful selection of locally produced foods including- Boyne Valley Farmhouse Cheese, Finnegan’s Farms Potatoes, Meade Potatoes, Newgrange Gold Oils, What’s for Pudding Desserts, Hugh Maguires black pudding and Clarkes Fresh Fruit Jams and was very much enjoyed by all!
Full and refreshed we returned for our 4th panel of the day – Business Model Innovation- Scalable by Design. Joining Brian on stage to debate this topic was Alison Cowzer – East Coast Bakehouse, Caroline Horgan – Abbeylands Furniture, John Cunningham – Epicom Foods, Minister Helen McEntee TD and Dermot Ryan – AIB.
From this super line up of speakers the audience received many fascinating insights and thoughts. Alison explained to us her plans for East Coast Bakehouse, how it has a colossal 18 metre oven and the intention is to achieve significant export growth in the near future. Caroline talked us through the impact the recession had on her business and how she had to diversify significantly to survive. She explained her future plans for growth into new avenues and markets in the coming months. Minister McEntee informed us off the various strategies the government is applying to support enterprise and how they plan to be more agile in reacting to the needs of entrepreneurs and business owners. Dermot shared with us AIB willingness to back businesses but the importance of business owners when raising finance to find another source of funding along with their ban to share the risk. John divulged his fascinating experiences in doing business in China and the etiquette which they apply to doing business. Overall this discussion was truly great to listen to and a lot of great tips were shared.
Our final speakers for the day was Anne Lanigan – Enterprise Ireland Brexit Unit and Anne took su through the way in which Brexit may impact on SMEs and what SMEs should be doing not to help mitigate issues in the coming months and years. Many of the audience availed of her Q & A session afterwards and lot of actionable advice was offered.
Throughout the day as well as all our speakers we also hosted a large business exhibition, and this was once more a huge success.
The #MEW2017 Business Conference & Expo was very well attended, and the feedback has been excellent so far with many people enjoying the panel format of our discussions. We would like to thank all the speakers who participated and shared their experiences and learning with us.
info@meathenterprise.ie