“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” said Country Crest managing director Michael Hoey, quoting Charles Dickens to describe his leadership journey at the Nuffield conference last week.

The visionary leader, who sat on the Food Wise 2025 agri-food strategy group, speaks openly about the challenges that beset him and his business over the last 40 years.

Believing in the benefit of what agriculture can add to the Irish economy, he is leading the efforts to re-establish a sugar beet industry in Ireland.

What becomes clear within a few moments of listening to the humble north county Dublin businessman, is his clarity of vision.

“You will meet many adversities in life, with lots of roadblocks in front of you, but life and business is about finding a way of getting around them,” said the 53-year-old.

Hoey left school at the age of 15 to help run the 52-acre family vegetable and livestock farm. He said the 1980s were very tight and there was huge pressure coming from the retailers to improve quality.

He believed the only way to be successful in vegetable growing was to partner with the retailers.

He explained how this led to the founding of Country Crest in 1994, with his brother Gabriel. The company has since become the sole supplier of potatoes to Tesco, and employs 260 people today.

Farming 3,200 acres, with about a quarter of this owned, Hoey is not one to sit around. Growing a range of crops including potatoes, onions and cereals, in recent years he has returned to beef production and fattens 1,000 cattle per year for his ready-made meals business.

“Twenty years ago we were eating 7,000t of potatoes per week, today it is less than 4,500t per week”.

Hoey saw that lifestyles were changing and looked at different ways to compete in the carbohydrate sector, against pasta and rice.

“We needed to adapt to the changing consumer, and give them value-added solutions rather than dealing in commodities,” he said. It was that vision that led to the setting up of Ballymaguire Foods just as the recession was kicking off.

Producing up to 200,000 meals per week, it has become the largest chilled ready meal producer in Ireland. But what is unique about Ballymaguire is that it is invisible to the consumer. There are no brands.

“The supermarket and catering industry are killing brands. If a brand costs 10% more to support than private label, the retailers don’t want to know about them,” says Hoey.

Hoey speaks about the benefits of strong partnerships and how he has fostered the relationship to improve the power imbalances between the different players along the supply chain. He is a strong believer in paying a decent price back to the producer.

“One of the key fundamentals in business today is that you need to be fully transparent and you cannot bury things,” he said.

“Bringing the animal to the door of the abattoir is not going to hit it anymore. More and more people care about where their food comes from”, says Hoey.

He said “people of tomorrow will not push wire trolleys around supermarkets”. He said more and more people are either shopping online or eating outside the home. The challenge is that 70% of what is served outside the home is imported and most lacks traceability.

Brexit

Despite partnering with some of the largest retailers in Ireland, he said there are challenges. “There is about 30% too much retail space here and the Government continues to award planning permissions. The reason, he said, is that more space effectively keeps a cap on food prices. And as each competes for market share, special offers that drive footfall get pushed back on to the grower.

Overall, he said he has been very fortunate in business and puts some of the success down to luck. He concluded that we are all only here for a few years and leadership is about helping people on that journey or making things a bit better for them.