Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

Michael Carey

Jacob Fruitfield

Chairman of Jacob Fruitfield Michael Carey used to work in his father’s newsagent in Cabra on Dublin’s Northside selling Silvermints, Scots Clan and other brands over the counter, which he has since gone on to drive as consistent market leaders.

Having strong brands that are either No 1 or a strong No 2 in the market is the basic principle of what Jacob Fruitfield does, he says.

“My father used to say when times were bad to paint the shop to make it look well. In the same way at Jacob Fruitfield we’re investing heavily in advertising and promotions, as having leading brands is a strategic goal. We’re competing with the strongest multinational brands and will continue to look for opportunities to acquire more market leaders.”

Chef now holds 28pc of the Irish sauce market, while Jacob’s accounts for 36pc of all biscuit sales. Silvermints has a 24pc share of the mint confectionary market and Fruitfield owns 52pc of the marmalade category.

According to Carey, sales at Jacob Fruitfield were around €110m in 2009, of which around €10m came from exports.

Entrepreneurial spirit built in college

His inclination towards entrepreneurship first manifested itself when he was studying for a bachelor of commerce degree in University College Dublin.

“I was actively involved in the basketball club and became chairman. I wasn’t that great at playing, but administration of a sport interested me. During that time I came to the conclusion that I wanted to get into a management position in a business and I decided I wanted to own my own business by the age of 40.”

Remarkably, Carey achieved this goal a week before his 40^th birthday, when he led a management buy-in at the former Nestlé Foods manufacturing operation in Tallaght and became managing director of Fruitfield Foods in 2002.

The path to ownership

His journey to that point was measured and impressive. After completing an MBS in marketing in 1984, Carey spent over 20 years working in the food industry in Ireland and the UK.

He held marketing jobs in Batchelors in Ireland and Fox’s Biscuits in Yorkshire before becoming marketing director of C&C soft drinks. He then moved to Irish Biscuits as marketing director. In 1997 he moved within Groupe Danone to become managing director of Evian-Volvic UK, returned to Fox’s Biscuits as managing director and then joined Kelloggs’ as managing director, UK and Ireland.

“When setting out to own my own business I talked to 30 or 40 people over endless cups of coffee about what the opportunities were and what I could do. My alternatives were to start a business or acquire one of some scale, and I was pretty much advised that the latter was the better option.

“I had spent 20 years working in large businesses and had all the skills of management and growing existing businesses, having run a number of them. This would give me some competitive advantage. I had confidence about buying a business and turning it around financially. Starting a business from scratch would have meant a lot of the stuff would have been entirely new to me.”

Chief executive of Jacob Fruitfield in 2004

In August 2004, Fruitfield Foods acquired Irish Biscuits/Jacobs from United Biscuits and Carey became chief executive of the Jacob Fruitfield Group. Since then the company has acquired two smaller businesses – the Real Ireland Food Company in Drogheda and Katies, a biscuit company in west Cork.

Integrating the businesses was a long process, which involved reducing the workforce from around 400 to 100, closing the company’s manufacturing facilities in Ireland and moving production to third-party factories in the UK and mainland Europe.

 “We knew the scale of the business and the direction we wanted to achieve but the detail of how that was going to happen took time. The biggest issue in the group was the cost competitiveness of the manufacturing activities. Irish consumers weren’t willing to pay for inefficiency in manufacturing and neither should they. Really it was about taking out any costs that were higher than they could possibly be,” says Carey.

 Now a judge of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition, Carey says one of the common traits of all successful entrepreneurs is that they view their business as a team game, not an individual sport.

“Lots of really good companies have been created because of the spark and energy of one person, but none of those reached their potential without the entrepreneur realising they needed a team around them to complement each other’s skills and cover all the necessary areas.

“Another thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs such as Aidan Heavey of Tullow Oil or Terry Clune of Taxback.com is the blind belief that the business is going to work. Their energy won’t let anything get in their way.”