Silver Hill Farm, a duck farm and processing factory located on the outskirts of Emyvale, Co Monaghan, 6km from the border with Northern Ireland.

The farm was established in 1962 and processed their ducks but in recent years has grown to a company that processes 3.9m ducks annually, between those grown by the business and by contracted growers.

They have ambitions to almost double the capacity from 80,000 ducks per week at present to 150,000 ducks in an expanded factory.

Markets

Speaking at the Getting ready for Brexit event in Monaghan, Barry Cullen from Silver Hill Farm explained that the company has diversified its markets significantly over the past five years but the UK is still the main customer, taking 45% of their production.

Asia has been its main growth market in recent years. He spoke about Singapore that bought nothing as recently as four years ago but now take 10,000 ducks per week.

He is heading on a trade mission with Bord Bia and the Minister to Malaysia and Indonesia in a couple of weeks. It is mainly a dairy market but they hope to open these areas for ducks by the end of this year or start of next year.

The next targets will be Vietnam and Cambodia. In fact, that whole region is amazing.

"We are very insular. We used to think of Europe as big, but it expands your thinking and importantly they pay a premium price for a quality product which is great news for us," Barry said.

"We are bringing in a chef in mid-November who owns 40 restaurants across Asia and he cannot get over the quality of Irish food and in fact he is now buying pork as well and looking at sea food, purely on the back of him coming in to buy duck."

Cross border business

Silver Hill Farm is a family business established for over five decades and located on the outskirts of Emyvale, Co Monaghan.

It was originally a duck farm that processed its produce but now has a series of external growers, both sides of the border. The cross-border nature of the business is that the eggs originate in Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone, 1km north of the border, and are hatched in the hatchery a few kilometres on the southern side of the border in Bragan, Co Monaghan.

The ducks are reared on farms both sides of the border, some company-owned, others contracted farmer growers.

In many cases, a duck house is a supplementary income on another farm business and this model was used by the company to expand production quickly.

All ducks, from whatever side of the border they are grown, come to Emyvale to the factory for processing. All ducks cross the border either three of four times before they are ready for the market.

Impact of Brexit so far

The immediate effect of the Brexit vote on the company was having to adjust price to UK customers twice in six months by 15% to reflect the weakening of sterling against the euro. Significantly the other big impact of Brexit was a decision to stop recruiting farmer growers in the north, and there is now a list of farmers in the north wanting to build but with the Brexit uncertainty the company has decided they cannot take the risk.

Silver Hill's focus on recruiting growers is now confined to the Monaghan region, where it is in competition with turkey and chicken growers.

The company has been in business since 1962 and is well aware of what a hard border was in the past.

They take the view that whatever happens with Brexit they will get through it, though at best it is a nuisance, depending on how hard the border is after Brexit.