Cotter's Irish crusade: Bord Bia cranks up the charm

Bord Bia is cranking up the Irish charm. In recent months the Irish Food Board has played host to the Chinese deputy president, jetted back to China on a trade mission and run the first of a series of ‘speed-dating’ events in which more than 170 Irish producers met 500 European buyers, striking deals worth more than €3m. And it’s just taken over Selfridges’ Food Hall for a two-week event aimed at convincing Brits to buy more Irish.

Clearly, Ireland is out to impress, as the venue for my meeting with Bord Bia CEO Aidan Cotter confirms. We’re at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a restaurant with a waiting list of six months. Cotter clearly has friends in high places. And how Ireland needs friends. In 2008, it was the first Eurozone country to fall into recession and is still labouring under the effects of high unemployment and falling consumer spending.

But Cotter & Co are hoping that food and drink, which accounts for roughly 10% of Irish GDP, can help the Celtic Tiger get back on its feet. In the next decade, Bord Bia wants to have increased annual food exports from €9bn to €12bn a year. But how? And to whom? Despite the difficulties at home, Irish food and drink is certainly gaining currency abroad.

“Food and drink exports have been growing three times as fast as other exports in recent years,” says Cotter. “They’ve grown by 25% over the past two years, by 12% in the past year and in fact our economy is very much being driven by this export growth. It’s very important to Ireland that the food industry is performing well.”

The biggest boost yet will come in 2015, when the EU relaxes quotas that limit the amount of milk European dairy farmers can produce. Ireland expects its output of milk to have increased by 50% by 2020 as a result, with most of this extra production being exported, mostly to the developing world (particularly Africa and China), as infant milk formula. “Ireland produces about a tenth of the world’s output of infant formula and we expect that to grow,” says Cotter.

“But there are investments to make. In terms of increasing drying capacity there needs to be a decision made this year. In the next four decades the world population will grow by two billion people - a billion in Asia and a billion in Africa - and those are the regions that will primarily drive our growth.”

Feeding this booming population - especially with energy-intense products like powdered milk and beef, two of Ireland’s biggest food exports - also raises pressing environmental questions. “Put graphically, it’s the question: do we starve or do we burn?” says Cotter. Clearly, neither is desirable. So the Irish food industry has embarked on a sustainability programme to ensure the rapid increase in production it is aiming for has as little impact on the planet as possible.

“Ireland is universally associated with the colour green but it’s no longer enough to say we’re green. We have to prove it”

Aidan Cotter

So far, more than half the country’s 32,000 beef farms have been audited and that number is growing at a rate of 500 a week, says Cotter, adding that the Irish dairy industry has the lowest per capita carbon footprint in Europe. Further initiatives are in place to cement these green credentials.

Creating a ‘green image’ for produce from the Emerald Isle is also viewed as a valuable branding tool, particularly for the country’s smaller food and drink suppliers. “Ireland is universally associated with the colour green but it’s no longer enough to say we’re green. We have to prove it,” says Cotter. Some of Ireland’s smaller farmers and manufacturers are sceptical about how far this branding exercise can go, given the country’s reliance on B2B markets such as milk formula and unbranded beef sales to supermarkets and fast food operators.

“It’s all very well Bord Bia talking about ‘Brand Ireland’ but when so much of our beef goes to people like McDonald’s, what’s that doing for our image?” said one producer at Bord Bia’s Delicious Ireland event at Selfridges last week.

Cotter insists global awareness of Ireland as a food nation is on the up. Demand for Irish milk formula is growing (sales to China in particular, following its melamine contamination scandal in 2008), and Irish beef has “the best portfolio of retail and food service business of any national beef industry in the world”.

Ireland’s smaller producers are also carving out growing export markets. Through a scheme developed by Bord Bia, personnel from large multinationals are serving as mentors to help smaller companies achieve their goals and the body has also helped set up buying groups to increase these players’ clout. In China, as well as infant formula, one growing niche market is for pigs’ ears. And in the US, Irish farmhouse cheese brand Cashel Blue has teamed up with dairy giant and Kerry Gold owner the Irish Dairy Board, giving it distribution across the country.

So, with one eye on the US, and another on China, ‘Brand Ireland’ seems to be gaining a growing number of powerful ambassadors. Even Cotter’s choice at Dinner is telling: he starts with a ragu of pigs’ ears. And though we can’t vouch for this delicacy’s provenance, there can be no doubting the Irish credentials of the Hereford rib-eye steak he chooses for his entree, as he helped negotiate the supply. And as Waitrose will tell you, brand ambassadors don’t get more powerful than Heston Blumenthal.