Speakers 2016

Michael Creed TD was appointed Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine on 6 May 2016.  Michael was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1989. He has held several positions on the Fine Gael front-bench including; Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 2007 – 2010, Health 1989 – 1993, Youth & Sport in 1993-1994 and Education; Arts, Culture & the Gaeltacht in 1994. He was first co-opted to Cork County Council in 1987.  He was the Chairperson of Cork County Council for the period 2005/06.

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Una Fitzgibbon – Bord Bia – Director of Marketing Services

Presentation title: Business Growth for Uncertain Times

Una FitzGibbon is Bord Bia’s Marketing Director, responsible for effective marketing communications to consumer and business audiences at home and abroad. Una leads the strategy & communications for Origin Green – an initiative that galvanises Ireland’s food and drink sectors to become real and credible world leaders in sustainability.

A member of the Bord Bia senior leadership team for over 10 years, Una is also an appointed member of the Food Safety Consultative Council of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and a member of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. She has previously worked in executive and management roles in Enterprise Ireland, Omnicom Owned Marketing Solutions Ltd. and Diageo PLC in London.

Una has a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin and a Post Graduate in European Export Marketing Management from the Université Catholique de Louvain/Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe. She is also a member of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) alumni.

Una is a regular speaker at international conferences on the areas of Food and Beverage business, marketing and sustainability.

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Majella Kelleher – SEAI – Head of Energy Demand Management

Majella Kelleher is Head of Energy Demand Management with SEAI with responsibility for programmes in business and the public sector. Majella is a graduate of University College Cork with a civil engineering degree and of Trinity College Dublin with an MBA, and more recently an MSc in Management (OB). Since joining SEAI she has filled a number of roles prior to her current one – most recently as Head of Sustainable Energy Deployment where she had responsibility for a range of deployment schemes in the domestic sector. Prior to this she worked as a business consultant both in Ireland and abroad.

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Burren Smokehouse – Birgitta Hedin-Curtin – Founder

Developed Burren Smokehouse with Visitor Centre with an Irish & International audience of 25,000 visitors yearly.
We have been involved in Food Tourism since 1989 and received an Ecotourism Gold Certificate 2011.

Developed Web sales, Mail-order worldwide to private mail order customers. Developed sales in Ireland and Internationally to top end Speciality Food Stores – Fortnum & Mason, Dean & Deluca USA, Kuwait and Qatar, KaDeWe in Berlin, and stores in Shanghai.

Product Development in range of 50+ sizes, recipes for marinades, Hot & Coldsmoked, Hampers/ Food Baskets.

McDonalds Restaurants Ireland – Nigel McGuire – Director of Development & Supply Chain

As Director of Real Estate & Supply Chain Nigel is responsible for all elements of McDonald’s supply chain, purchasing, logistics & sustainability.  His remit also covers new restaurant development, re-imaging & innovation

Nigel joined the company in 2007 & has previously led the Planning Process within McDonald’s Ireland focusing on the creation and delivery of our Plan to Win. Nigel has also supported the Real Estate Teams in the Nordic Markets, delivering strategy and market support to enable future restaurant growth & innovation across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, & Finland.

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 ABP Food Group – John Durkan – Sustainability & Environmental Manager

John Durkan holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science, a Master of Science in Waste Management and an MBA in Business Management.

John is the Environmental and Sustainability Manager for ABP for over 20 years and has developed ABPs’ Sustainability policy over the past five years.  ABP views sustainability as a key business metric, one that provides positive outcomes, improves competitiveness and makes sound business sense.

John has implemented many accredited systems within the processing sites to deliver sustainability e.g. ISO 14001 to good effect.

In today’s business environment, resource inputs are costly and their efficient usage is warranted. ABP’s campaign ‘Doing More with Less’ has commenced the decoupling of resource inputs to productivity. These resources include water, electricity, fuels, and other inputs.

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Derrycamma Farm – Patrick Rooney – Director

We believe that farming practices should increase biodiversity, enhance the wildlife habitat and improve the soil structure. It is essential that long term intensive agriculture does not damage the soil or the environment for many obvious reasons including the long term efficient production of food. Unfortunately many modern day farming practices have damaged our environment because they do not take into account the importance of sustainability in the long term.

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Coca Cola (HBC) – Mark Haughey – Sustainability Manager

Mark has been with Coca Cola for 13 years, starting in their former site (Lambeg) as QA Supervisor before progressing quickly to Production Manager. With the transition to the new purpose built Knockmore Hill site just outside Lisburn in 2008, Mark was appointed to the Shift Operations Role primarily looking after the Canning, Glass and Postmix Operations. Then in February 2012 he moved to Continuous Improvement Manager for Sales, Operations, Planning, Logistics and Manufacturing, this new position incorporated Operational Excellence Modules from Coca Cola Hellenics Group as well as other aspects of driving improvements within Supply Chain, from cost savings and efficiency drivers to innovative and pro-active approaches the way we do business.  Then in February 2015, Mark was appointed to the position of Country Sustainability Manager, whereby he was responsible for the overall Quality, Environmental, Health and safety of the Coca Cola Hellenic operation in Ireland.  He has been actively progressing the company’s 2020 vision, to achieve world class performance on waste, water and carbon footprint.

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Dairygold – Dave Fitzgerald – Head of Sustainability

Dave Fitzgerald heads the sustainability programme at Dairygold where he is responsible for development of group sustainability strategy, as well as driving and communicating sustainable business improvement. This includes responsibility for sustainability reporting and communications both internally and externally.

He has over 15 years’ experience in the food and beverage sector with extensive knowledge of production operations and technical development in brewing, distilling and dairy. He has previously led sustainability programmes in Europe and Africa delivering carbon emissions reduction, water and energy efficiency and waste reduction initiatives.

Dave is also involved in regulatory and policy engagement at national and European level as chair of IBEC’s Water Working Group and a member of the European Dairy Association Sustainability Working Group.

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Calor Ireland – Richard Alexander – Industrial Manager

Richard Alexander is the Industrial & Commercial Sales Manager for Calor Gas and has over 20 years of experience in the energy sector in both sales and technical roles. He is a qualified mechanical engineer (Bachelor of Engineering (BEng), First Class) and an alumni of the globally renowned International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland. Richard has travelled extensively with SHV Energy, and in doing so has gained knowledge in a wide range of industries so that he can deliver tailored energy solutions to Irish businesses who are off the natural gas grid. Richard heads up a team who focus on providing high efficiency and cleaner energy solutions to the Irish food production sector and illustrates how this has had a direct impact on their bottom line, and also reducing their carbon footprint.  He currently represents Calor Gas on the Sustainable Energy Authority for Ireland (SEAI) Governance Committee that aims to achieve energy savings in line with the agreed 2020 EU targets.

Musgraves Group – John Curran – Head of Sustainability

John Curran is Head of Sustainability at Musgrave Group, Ireland’s largest retailer. He holds an MSc in Environmental Science, Technology & Engineering and is a member of Engineers Ireland.

John leads the development and implementation of sustainability strategy across the group’s extensive wholesale and retail operations in Ireland and Spain. This includes the development of policy, plans and targets; embedding sustainability best practice into all business management processes; the measurement of progress and the reporting of performance. Musgrave recently became the first retailer to achieve Verified Membership of Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme.

John also supports Musgrave Group and Divisional Boards and provides guidance across a broad range of sustainability, commercial risk management and technical matters.

John is a member of the board of Repak Limited and chair of the Industry Sustainability Group at the UK’s Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD).

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Enterprise Ireland – Dr. Richard Keegan – FIEI Manager (Benchmarking & Sustainability)

Dr. Keegan is a specialist in the areas of Lean/World Class Business and Benchmarking with Enterprise Ireland. He has focused on adapting these concepts for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). He has worked closely with a large number of companies, helping them introduce the concepts of world class manufacturing based on objective benchmarking. He has written several books on the topic and is a Adjunct Assistant Professor, in the Business School at Trinity College Dublin, lecturing at MBA on Operations Strategy and undergraduate level on Operations Management, and as a guest lecturer at National University of Ireland – Galway, to both undergraduate and MBA levels.

He acts as the European advisor to the World Class Activities of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Co-Operation. He lead the DG Enterprise Benchmarking Initiative, the European Benchmarking Forum and Network, focused on developing synergies and actions forward for benchmarking within the European Community as a means of developing the competitiveness of industry. He has trained as an engineer and has achieved Chartered Engineer status and a Master of Commerce degree on world class practices for SMEs. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers of Ireland.

He has been awarded a Doctoral degree with National University of Ireland, Galway, for work based on the use of benchmarking and world class practices to improve the operational performance of SMEs using networks.

His latest book Applied Benchmarking for Competitiveness has been published in Ireland and India and has been published in a translated form in Portugal and Italy. Proceeds from the book are given to the Irish Cancer Society, Research Fund.

He has worked previously for DAF Trucks, Nokia and Nestle.

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Greencore – James Cherry – Group Environmental Manager

A dedicated environmental manager with extensive experience in the food manufacturing industry and a desire to drive environmental performance improvements through focusing on resource efficiency and tackling issues at source rather than end of pipe solutions.

Group environmental manager with responsibility for supporting all Greencore UK manufacturing sites on all aspects of environmental management, and development and implementation of group environmental policy and strategy. Key areas include:

• Carbon & energy management
• Waste Management
• Water & Effluent Management
• Environmental Auditing
• Environmental Management Systems
• Employee Engagement
• External representation
• Monitoring

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Irish Fish Canners – Keith Bonner – Sustainability Director

Today, Irish Fish Canners represents the very best of 
fish canning. The company is the largest and only fish canning facility in Ireland, located along the “Wild Atlantic Way”, we are in close proximity to Ireland’s premier deep-sea fishing port, Killybegs. Our unique location ensures us access to the world finest fish, and as a result of added value the business has now evolved into a major canned seafood provider to a number of world class leading brands in global markets.

Recognised and supported by our loyal customer 
base spanning in excess of 35 years and our dedicated workforce, many who have been with the company since it’s inception, we continue to supply markets with our premium quality canned fish products both domestically and internationally.

Our objective is to ensure the longevity and sustainability of our business for the future generations. Our ambitious commitment to sustainability has been recognised and supported by Bord Bia’s Origin Green Sustainability Program.

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