Clonakilty Blackpudding company hopes to manufacture in Boston

Cork-based Clonakilty Food Company, best known for its black pudding, is examining the feasibility of manufacturing in the United States under contract with a local player.

“We contract manufacture in Australia – that’s just the last two years – and we’re looking at the States now,” said Colette Twomey, owner of the business, before travelling to Boston for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) chief executives retreat.

“We have somebody from Bord Bia doing a feasibility study over there. We have looked at New York but Boston, I think, would be a better option.”

Ms Twomey planned to meet with contacts while in Boston with the EOY retreat.

“It’s really a working trip. We have the model in Australia and it’s working well. We partnered with a guy, small like ourselves, top-end quality, and very personable. He has a chain of butcher shops.”

Expansion programme

Irish expats would be the target market in the US for its puddings, sausages and bacon products. Some 10 per cent of Clonakilty Blackpudding’s sales are in the UK and, Ms Twomey said, the United Arab Emirates, particularly Dubai, is also a growing market, again among expats.

The feasibility study in the US will be completed in June.

The West Cork company is in the middle of a major expansion programme with a new plant, costing €6 million to €7 million, being built in Clonakilty. It is expected to open next February.

“We’ve just broken ground,” Ms Twomey said. “We’ll get a USDA [US Department of Agriculture] approved facility there.

Global thinking

“We’ll have a visitor facility as well. It will more than double our capacity and give us the room to expand our range and do more things with black pudding.”

The business was founded in 1976 in the back of the family butcher’s shop. Clonakilty Blackpudding has since grown to become a business with annual turnover of €14 million a year and 48 staff.

Sausages are now its biggest seller with 60 per cent of its pudding sales being black and 40 per cent white.

Ms Twomey was a finalist in the EOY programme in 2010, travelling to Shanghai for the CEO retreat. She credits that trip as being the “lightbulb” moment in her outlook.

“It changed my thinking totally. It was the start of the global thinking. The UK was as far as you’d go or maybe some of Spain with an Irish pub, or something like that. After that trip, everything felt possible.”

The new facility will allow the company to expand its range. “We’ll be able to slice and dice it and put it with scallops or put it into chicken, or use it as a pizza topping. You could do party pieces.

“We will have a strong new product development section and we’ll take it from there.”

She accepts that the business has to adapt to market trends. “Not many people will be doing a fry in the morning any more. So it’s our job to innovate and find other ways to get people eating black pudding.”