JAPANESE-OWNED manufacturer Goodman Medical Ireland will today announce plans to create more than 100 high-end jobs for its base in Galway over the next five years.
This will be the latest positive jobs announcement in the past week for Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe.
Yesterday, services group OSG said it would create up to 155 jobs in Dublin over the next three years while Largo Foods, maker of Tayto and Hunky Dory crisps, is to add 40 jobs at its production facility in Donegal from January.
These follow HP’s decision to add 105 positions to a facility in Galway while Facebook plans to create 100 positions in Dublin.
In addition, Waterford-based call centre specialist Rigney Dolphin yesterday announced plans to expand into the North by creating 300 jobs in Derry over three years.
Goodman’s new jobs are part of a €1.1 million investment by the Japanese company here.
The new positions will be in manufacturing, sales and marketing, and research and development, and are supported by IDA Ireland.
Goodman Medical Ireland was set up in 2004 and employs 56 staff who manufacture cardiology products such as catheters and bare metal stents.
The Galway plant will become the firm’s sales and marketing centre for Goodman’s Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
OSG, meanwhile, is planning a €6 million investment to aid its international expansion in the insurance and financial services outsourcing markets.
Fifty of the positions are to be created next year, with recruitment beginning in March.
Enterprise Ireland will support the investment, and also provide technical and marketing support to help OSG with its overall business transformation programme.
“The OSG business plan is for expansion, with a view to increasing existing work with existing clients and to move into developing more the customer- and knowledge-based services within the company,” its chief executive Malcolm Hughes said.
Mr O’Keeffe described the move as a “significant investment in productivity and efficiency” that would secure jobs and growth for the firm here. “Firms such as OSG are at the forefront of Ireland’s smart economy, creating high-quality sustainable jobs and driving export sales across the globe,” he said.
OSG wants to double its revenue here to €40 million by 2013.
In Donegal, Largo will take delivery of new machinery this week to facilitate the production of a new rice-based tortilla chip.
Largo has spent €2.4 million on the project and it is expected that 90 per cent of produce will be exported.
Rigney Dolphin intends to establish a new customer service centre in Derry to look after clients in the North and Britain. It already employs more than 1,200 people in Waterford city, Dundalk and Dublin. The company has been offered £1.2 million in financial support from Invest NI.
Rigney Dolphin’s major clients include An Post, BMW and Vodafone. Celine Fitzgerald, Rigney Dolphin’s chief executive, said the new centre would be an “important strategic development” for the company.
The North’s Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster welcomed the jobs boost for the north west.
Ms Foster said: “Rigney Dolphin will offer new employment and career development opportunities and deliver a considerable contribution to the local economy by generating in excess of £4 million annually once the full staff complement is reached.”
Latest figures show unemployment is rising in the North.
In the three months to October the total number of people out of work in the North rose by 6,000 to 63,000.
The official unemployment rate for August to October increased to an estimated 7.6 per cent.
