Mr Crumb's praise for state action on Brexit

A little over a month after Brexit, Jason Coyle is happy that the Finea firm, Mr Crumb, is exporting to the UK from Ireland rather than the other way around.

The award-winning north Westmeath food producer exports more than 60 per cent of its output, and the UK is its biggest market. Other markets include the US, France and Singapore. You can even purchase Mr Crumb products, such as breadcrumbs and stuffing, in the Falklands Island.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, sales director Jason Coyle says that while the Ireland and the UK have “avoided the cliff edge and sanity” [in the form of a tariff free agreement] has prevailed, Brexit has been a “huge drain on management time and resources during a very difficult time for business with Covid”.

“The reality is that our closest neighbour and trading partner has left the EU and that brings with it a lot of procedural changes and paperwork, customs and food safety requirements, all of which cost both time and money, but our supply chain team did a wonderful job.

“While switching exports to the EU or Asia, rather than the UK, sounds great as a soundbite, realistically it’s not where we Irish have connections and there are no family, cultural, linguistic or culinary ties. So whether we like it or not, the UK is our nearest and most important customer.”

It hasn’t been easy, but the transition process for Irish firms has been significantly smoother than for their UK counterparts. Mr Coyle says that a lot of the credit for this must go to the Irish government, both the current administration and the one that went before it.

“In our opinion the Irish government did a good job. We were lucky to have seasoned politicians in place. The government acted like a good neighbour would. They kept their cool. They encouraged things on and kept the dialogue open. To me that was a good showing and in the end we got the least bad version of Brexit that was possible, as Micheál Martin said.”

The proactive approach of the government in preparing for Brexit is in sharp contrast to Boris Johnston’s “inexperienced” UK administration and firms over there are paying the price, Mr Coyle says.

“UK companies are currently trying to do the work that our government prepared Irish firms to do over the last 12 months. Now they are under serious pressure, scrambling around to figure out what they need to do.”

The government may have done a good job preparing Irish firms for Brexit, but Mr Coyle said it should provide more supports to the SME and entrepreneurs in the agri-food sector.

Even before Brexit, it was becoming increasingly more challenging to run an export-focused firm in Ireland, he says.

“There has been major price stagnation in the market for more than a decade. The prices in the supermarkets haven’t gone up, whereas the costs of inputs and services are constantly rising. That is a problem for the industry.

“For example, labour, and services such as electricity, are much more expensive in Ireland than they are in the UK and Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, we are becoming an expensive country to produce in, unless you are producing a commodity, like beef or dairy, or you have a big automated site making one product.”

“It is having a knock-on effect. Whereas the government have done a good job up to now [with Brexit], they do need prioritise cost cutting.”

Depending on the time of year, Mr Crumb employs between 85 and 120 people in its facility in Finea. Bernard Coyle set up the company a quarter of a century ago, after he noticed a gap in the market.

“He started off as a salesman for a local bakery and every Christmas people used to come up to him and instead of buying fresh bread they wanted to buy the stale loafs that had become hard and they used it to make breadcrumbs for stuffing and Christmas puddings.

“He saw the opportunity and he started off, as you could in those days, making it in his sitting room in Finea. As kids we used to get involved, putting bread through a crumber.”

Today, the firm supplies such retail heavyweights as Dunnes Stores and SuperValu in Ireland and Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in the UK.

Mr Coyle believes that for a variety of reasons, including rising costs and increased regulation, it is much harder for a food entrepreneur today to do what his father did back then.

He would like to see a range of measures introduced to “help maintain the food industry in Ireland, which is important to the rural economy”.

He would like to see a state-backed credit insurance scheme, increased investment in innovation (enabling technologies) and “importantly, foreign market development assistance for the likes of the USA, where there are close cultural ties and support for Ireland, but there is little government support available, either in terms of funding or advice”.

Mr Coyle believes that Irish lenders need to provide loans for business for up to 20 years, which he says “are common in many other progressive economies like Japan”.

“Business is cyclical, never a straight line, and like the economy, it will rise and fall. Short-term loans of any less that say 10 years are detrimental to business.”

In addition to greater financial and taxation for support for people “who take the plunge to start their own business and employ others”, Mr Coyle believes the government needs to intervene to “protect farmers, farm income and agri-food”.

“We really have amazing food in Ireland, which is natural. Good food can maintain good health.

Other countries who have not protected farming and the environment are now dominated by cost focused factory farms and multinationals, which heavily process food, leading to longer term impacts on health and the economy.”

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