IDA recognising potential Mullingar has for investors

A multi-million euro investment in a 50,000 sq.ft advanced building for Mullingar, aimed at securing foreign direct investment (FDI) for the town has been hailed as a “massive” achievement.

“It's obviously something that we’ve been pushing for a while, and it’s recognition of Mullingar’s potential, the momentum behind the town, and how it’s been positioned to win foreign direct investment (FDI) into the future,” says the Mullingar “born and bred” Ken Whitelaw, regional manager of Ireland's Investment and Development Agency (IDA).

The IDA’s new four-year strategy, Driving Recovery and Sustainable Growth, has a strong focus on regional development, with 19 ‘Advanced Building Solutions’ (ABS) planned for regional locations, four of them in the Midlands, including Athlone, Tullamore, and Longford, but none as large in scale to that planned for Mullingar.

When ready, it will see between 50 to 250 people employed, depending on what sector secures the building.

“An advanced building is a multi-million euro state-of-the-art building that can be converted easily to suit the needs of different sectors and different types of businesses, be it technology, office, manufacturing, research, medtech, pharma,” explains Ken.

“It’s a high quality shell and core building that we’ll advertise to our 25 overseas offices, and we can advertise this at all stages, whether it's at planning or ground level stage, or finished, we’ll continue to tweak how we market that.”

While the various public tendering process takes time, the advanced building is something that will be realised and constructed by the end of the IDA’s four-year-strategy.

“We have already appointed a project manager, and we are detailing specifications for the design team, so the process has already started. “We are currently in the process of procuring an architect-led design team.”

The new 50,000sq.ft building will also have significant expansion capacity factored into the design.

Value proposition

The addition of an advanced building for Mullingar makes it easier to sell Mullingar as a key location to foreign direct investment, but Ken says the attractiveness of Mullingar as a region “is quite strong as it is”.

“The enterprise base in the town is very strong, with the National Science Park and the work of Gary Moore there, a key asset to the town.

“The presence of IMR (Irish Manufacturing Research) in that facility is a massive boon for the town as well,” he points out.

“I’ve personally led quite a number of itineraries to and through the National Scient Park over the last 12-18 months. But also the indiginious base of companies is recognised as being very strong, with the likes of Robotics and Drive and TEG, to name just two.”

Ken also praised Westmeath County Council who he says are very “pro-business” and open to working with the IDA in terms of working to attract FDI.

“As are the likes of Mullingar Chamber, under John Geoghegan’s leadership, which is very proactive and open and responsive as well.”

On a personal note for Ken, he says the multi-million investment on behalf of the IDA is “great to see as I’m born and bred Mullingar”.

“I live in Mullingar, so this has been on my radar for a long time and so it’s great to see it finally happening.

“I’m excited about this and looking forward to developing the marketing collateral around it and beginning to position it overseas, but we will just have to be patient and wait for it to go through the due process of planning and design.”

Employment

The IDA has been in existence for just over 70 years, but saw its strongest ever growth in the last five years.

“We now have over 257,000 people employed in IDA companies right across the country, and that represents a gross gain of over 20,000 people during last year alone,” says Ken.

“That 257,000 represents just over 12% of the national workforce, but not only that, our research tells us that for every 10 jobs we create, an additional 8 indirect jobs are created in the economy.”

And while Dublin is the island’s only international city of scale, making it extremely attractive for companies coming into the country to locate there, the IDA client companies still employ 145,000 people outside of Dublin, representing 56% of total IDA employment.

“That speaks to our continued focus as an agency on balanced regional development,” continues Ken. “That was a particular focus of our last strategy and it’s something that we have continued with in our new four year strategy, it is one of our five pillars.

“We achieved an overall uplift in regional investment of 50% over the last five years, which reflected an uplift of investment of at least 30% across all regions including the Midlands.”

Midlands

Already there are 44 IDA companies located in the Midland counties of Laois, Longford, Offaly and Westmeath, employing 6,300 people.

“That jobs figure represents an increase of 1.8% from last year’s base figure. It’s significant that there’s an increase at all given the impact of Covid-19 on the economy in general, and talks to the importance of FDI companies across the Midlands,” explains Ken.

Having those FDI companies located in the Midlands meant an overall payroll spend of €404 million in 2019, as well as a €72 million spend on Irish services, and a €49 million spend on Irish materials.

“That’s a total spend of €525 million, and that does not even include the significant spend these companies would have spent on capital expenditure, in-house R&D (research and development), and training,” says Ken. “Those numbers are hugely significant and there’s no denying the massive impact that IDA companies have on a region.”

New strategy

According to the IDA’s regional manager, the name of the IDA’s new four-year strategy, ‘Driving Recovery and Sustainable Growth’, speaks to the importance of the IDA’s existing client base will have

“An awful lot of what we do, despite the public’s perception, is not just about winning new business, it’s about sustaining the client base that we have.

“An awful lot of our time, effort and energy is spent working with those client companies and making sure that they are positioned as best they can be in the eyes of their international headquarters to safeguard their mandates in the first instance, and enhance them as much as possible, and increase the investment in their Irish operation, and increase the investment in RD&I (Research, Development and Innovation), and increase their investment in their talent and their people, so that’s our first key metric and strategy.”

Targets

Over the next four years the IDA will target a total of 800 new investments, 400 of those will be targeted at regional locations, including 25 in the Midlands.

“The success of that is dependent on a lot of factors. Obviously we’re all conscious of what’s happening internationally”, continues Ken.

“And while the impact of Covid-19 has been huge, an awful lot of companies benefited because of it. A total of 14 out of the top 15 biopharma, pharma and medtech companies are located in Ireland, and they are the companies that obviously benefited directly from the manufacture of PPE and research into a vaccine.

“Agility was the key factor there, but a lot of the tech companies found themselves to be resilient and unaffected because the technology industry in general proved to be unaffected, as did lots of the financial services companies that Ireland’s FDI base would be known for.”

And while geopolitical influences will continue to impact the FDI sphere, in the shorter term, Ken says the new Biden Harris should be good for business, as will the rollout of the vaccine.

“We did have a very strong 2020, but that was due to the groundwork we did going into 2020.

“As an agency, we also had to adapt and ensure that we could still sell Ireland remotely. And we found that it can be done. I suppose our strength has alway lain in the Irish ‘Cead Mile Failte’, it has always benefited us in the past - in the fact that we shake hands, look people in the eye, and let them see with their own eyes and ears how welcoming the general networks and the various established clusters are to new entrants.

“And that’s something that a lot of companies coming to Ireland for the first time are very pleasantly surprised at. Not just at how open the economy is but how helpful, not just agencies like us are because that’s our job, but how helpful perceived competitors are in welcoming other companies to set up in the area, in the region, in their own cluster. In the knowledge that yes, they might lose some staff in the short term, but ultimately having a deeper talent pool in a region or cluster will benefit that cluster in the longer term.

Brexit

While Ken admits he, like everyone, was waiting with “baited breath” for January 1st to see the full ramifications of Brexit, he says that “thankfully” from an IDA perspective at least, the implications have been quite subdued.

“That’s largely because we’ve been engaging with our companies over the last four years to make sure they were as prepared and Brexit-proofed as possible.

“Some elements still remain to be seen but from a supply chain perspective, a lot of these companies have been planning safety measures for a long time - be that stockpiling certain goods that might have risked production if they were delayed coming through UK ports, but a lot of them have found alternative routes or lengthened their supply chain timeframe.”

It seems that the negative implications have been quite few, and there’s also a positive flipside to Brexit.

“The IDA has won over 90 Brexit related projects in the last four years. The majority of them are financial services companies and because of that they have typically centred around the existing clusters, the specialities and expertise that Dublin offers.

“It’s not all financial services either. Quite a number of manufacturing and life science projects have been won across the regions as well.

“Brexit has played into our hands in terms of how we’re positioning ourselves across Europe and the States. The fact that we’re the only English-speaking common law country in Europe and an access point to 450 million Europeans, that’s a key magnet for a lot of companies looking to establish a foothold in Europe. So every cloud has its silver lining.”

Covid-19

And while Ken thinks we have yet to see the full ramifications Covid-19, he says the focus on remote working can only benefit regional location such as Mullingar.

“All surveys indicate that companies going forward are going to be more flexible and I think ultimately that will benefit regional locations. We’ve heard stories since March of regional estate agents being sold out of any properties, and people and families moving out of any cities and into the regions for a better quality of life, for better access to schools, for a lack of commuting.

“So when the economy and offices open again, I think we’re going to see a lot of those workers continuing to work in the likes of Mullingar, Tullamore, Portlaoise, Athlone.

“Employers are realising that productivity hasn’t dropped, that technology is now of a standard that company decision makers can have comfort in continuing to allow their workers to work remotely and I think that will help the development of these remote working hubs that we are beginning to see popping up around the country.

“I also think it might lead to companies securing smaller second site locations in regional locations, so that companies who have a HQ in a city like Dublin, would be comfortable having a team of ten, twenty or 30 in a smaller outside of Dublin in Mullingar for instance.”