Each month, we put the spotlight on a Tirlán employee and for our February newsletter, we’re talking to Philip McCabe

Ensuring that Kilkenny Cheese Ltd is ready to begin operations from January 8th next year is now top of the work agenda for Strategic Programmes Manager with Tirlán, Philip McCabe.

“I’m part of the Tirlán Strategy team and am currently working on a number of projects including the ORP Programme for Project Orange. A big part of my role at the moment is to make sure that we have the people and the processes in place ahead of our start date next January.

“We have 80 people to hire in the next year. A number of roles have been filled and some are currently advertised such as Automation Manager, Quality Manager, Planning Manager and Environmental Health and Safety Manager.

“We will have other roles coming on stream after that. All roles can be viewed on the careers section of the Tirlán website and elsewhere. Anyone who helps us fill these positions is eligible for a referral bonus, so we’re asking everyone to keep their eyes and ears open so we can attract the best possible candidates.

“It’s currently a very competitive recruitment environment as we have full employment. Having said that, these are unique opportunities for people to start in a greenfield dairy plant. The dairy industry is also a very stable industry, particularly when you compare it to what is happening in the tech industry at the moment.

“This state-of-the-art plant will be here for the next 60 years and beyond… We’re very fortunate to have fantastic partners in Royal A-ware and this new team will be responsible for a whole new way of processing cheese in Ireland. It will be an exciting place to work.”

Philip will be eight years in Tirlán in April and revels in his role. He began as a HR Business Partner in Agri and was heavily involved in the transition to Glanbia Ireland. The decision to go back to our cooperative roots was a very positive one, he believes.

“It has been a landmark year. The move to Abbey Quarter was fantastic and it’s great to have the teams together in one building. It has been a huge game changer for us and it’s great to be back in the same building as the agri team, many of whom I wouldn’t have seen because of Covid. I really like the idea of being a cooperative and that we are returning shareholder value to our suppliers and our communities.”

How does he unwind from the demands of such a challenging role? “I do a bit of jogging. I have small children so unfortunately I’ve no time for golf or cycling presently! I like following Meath football in good times and bad. It’s great to see my old Economics teacher in charge of the team and Sean Boylan on the line!

“I’m also proud to be on the board of the local cancer charity, Cois Nore, and am delighted to see Tirlán sponsor the local 5k run. Every euro raised by the charity is put to good use in offering services that wouldn’t be available in Kilkenny otherwise.”

Tirlán was proud to support the Cois Nore 5km run which took place at Kilkenny Castle Park on Bank Holiday Monday.

Set up in 2013, Cois Nore is a cancer support centre based in Kilkenny. The services are free of charge and they provide a range of therapies for those diagnosed with cancer including counselling, fatigue management and information sessions such as communicating with children about cancer.

Nearly 400 people, including Tirlán colleagues and 64 children, took part in the run which took place on February 6th. Speaking to Overherd, Cois Nore Manager Mary Dolan thanked Tirlán and the wider community for their support. “Cois Nore had another great year with our ‘5k for Brigid’s Day’ event in Kilkenny’s Castle Park. So many people supported our work through their participation and our amazing volunteers gave so generously of their time to help organise the event. We couldn’t have staged the event without the support of our business sponsor Tirlán, our media sponsor KCLR and our partners the Kilkenny City Harriers Athletics Club. We are a community-based charity working hard throughout the year to support people through a very difficult time in their lives and this event will help us to continue providing our important services.”

The run is an important fundraiser for the charity. It costs the charity approximately €250,000 a year to run their services. They have over 450 active clients on their books and have worked with over 1,000 clients in Kilkenny and the surrounding areas. This is the second year that Tirlán has supported the run.

Overherd catches up with colleagues in China to see how they’re celebrating the new year

Chinese New Year celebrations took place at the end of January as millions of people around the world enjoyed travelling to see loved ones for the first time in years as lockdown restrictions eased in China.

2023 is the Year of the Rabbit and people born in this year are said to be kind and quietly confident. They steadily move towards their goals, no matter what negativity others give them. With good reasoning skills and attention to detail, they make great scholars. They are social beings with an attractive aura. However, they find it hard to open up to others and often turn to escapism.

With the Year of the Rabbit underway, Overherd caught up with Tirlán colleagues in China to find out how they enjoyed the New Year celebrations.

Barry Deng, Key Account Manager

During the CNY, thousands of people return to their hometowns for family reunions. And I’m one of the returnees.

After getting home, I cleaned the house with my family, pasted Spring couplets, have reunion dinner and sent New Year wishes to each other.

My favourite Chinese New Year tradition is to set off fireworks. It is believed that fireworks can take away the bad luck and make the New Year more lucky. Fireworks also make the atmosphere of Spring Festival even stronger.

Anne Chen, Assistant Marketing Manager 

Pictured are ‘Fa Gao’ traditional Hakka dessert made during the Spring Festival. The top shape looks like petal which means the New Year with happiness, wealth and good luck just like blooming flowers, it brings the blessing to people and ancestors.

During the Spring Festival, family members prepared incense, red candles, foods and goldleaf paper to worship our ancestors and we pray for the coming year safety and happiness. Burning is regarded as a way of transmitting information to the invisible, so at the end of the worship we will burn the goldleaf paper to ancestors and gods.

Tracy Wang, Assistant Logistics and Planning Manager       

The first day of the first lunar month is Spring Festival, the beginning of a New Year for China. The Spring Festival celebration is a continuous process starting from the 23rd or 24th of the 12th lunar month.

According to the Chinese traditions, people often worship the kitchen God, do Spring Festival shopping and house cleaning until New Year’s Eve on the lunar calendar.

We’ll paste the Chinese character ”Fu” and post Spring Festival couplets on door frames. The joyous atmosphere of CNY will linger until the first full moon of the first lunar month.

Claire Hou, Brand Manager

The annual lantern fair normally will open on the first day of the lunar New Year and last to January 15, according to the lunar calendar. At Shanghai’s Yu Garden, this year the lanterns are inspired from a Chinese ancient mythic text – The Classic of Mountains and Seas. There’s a very impressive Rabbit Lantern and kids are happy to get a small rabbit lantern.

Haley Zhang, Marketing Assistant

In my family, we cooked a lot of dishes this New Year. My dad also specially made sun shaped dumplings for me. My niece wore Hanfu to celebrate the Spring Festival on Spring Festival’s Eve, we all think she’s very cute and pretty. With the end of Covid-19 restrictions the streets are bustling again and many markets are open. There are also some traditional events in the market, such as Chinese shadow puppetry and sugar paintings. This year my friends and I also had the opportunity to set off fireworks together.

Sandy Ge, Tea Beverage Channel Manager

Before the New Year’s Eve, the family gathers in the elder’s home, and then pastes the word “fu” around the house. We then have fun setting off firecrackers and eating the reunion dinner. On New Year’s Eve the family watches the New Year’s Party together, perhaps playing with friends online or offline. When I was young my favorite thing was to receive red envelopes from elders. The Spring Festival means reunion when you grow up.

Steven Zhang, Head of Food Service Channel

During the Spring Festival holiday, I chose self-driving travel to adjacent province-Zhejiang. I planned to visit three places, however due to the traffic jam on the road I had to cut the intended route and reached only one resort finally. Someone pointed out this is a “Retaliatory Consumption” after three years Covid-19 activity restriction.

I’m happy to share with Tirlán colleagues some impressive scenes I witnessed blow.

Magnificent Hangzhou bay cross-sea bridge. It’s total 36km to connect two cities, where I think it’s one of the most unforgettable driving experiences.

Putuo Mountain is a well-known Buddhism paradise for Chinese people. According to the statistics 0.26million tourists visit Putuo Mountain within two days during Chinese New Year holiday. People pray gods to protect them a health and prosperous year of Rabbit.

A photo with the god of money (real man cosplay). It’s an emblem to get wealth

Lisa Koep, Tirlán’s new Chief ESG Officer, chats to Overherd about her ambitions for her new role

Lisa Koep joined Tirlán as Chief ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) Officer last December in a newly created Executive Leadership Team role that will define and drive our organisation’s agenda as we advocate for a more sustainable and responsible business. Lisa is responsible for building on Tirlán’s existing ESG initiatives and plans, while guiding the execution of our strategy with further ESG ambitions and targets for our business.

Overherd at Tirlán was delighted to catch up with Lisa after her first couple of weeks in the job to learn more about who she is, her first impressions and what she hopes to achieve in her new role.

Lisa, thanks for taking the time to sit down with Overherd during what we’re sure has been a busy few weeks for you. Perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself?

It’s my pleasure, I’ve really enjoyed meeting as many people as possible since I started and I’m delighted to be introduced to Overherd’s readers.

I’m originally from a city called Kiel in Northern Germany, which is about 90km north of Hamburg. I’m 43, have two daughters aged 11 and 12, I’m married to an Irish man and we have a Cocker Spaniel called Johnny. I am currently living in Kilkenny and we are planning on moving to my husband’s family farm in Borris, County Carlow in the coming months. My family has had strong connections with Ireland for four generations and I’ve fond memories of frequent holidays spent exploring the country. While still in secondary school, I came to Dublin for a school exchange and liked it so much that I didn’t return to Germany for many years!

After school I went on to study economics and geography at Trinity College, with a focus on resource economics and sustainable development. I then did a Masters in communications before I started my professional career in 2006, when I joined Lidl Ireland in a project management role. One of those roles was to set up Lidl’s first CSR programme. After seven years with Lidl, I returned to university to pursue a PhD in business with a focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability. For the first time in many years, I then returned to live in Germany where I lectured and researched sustainable business practices at a German university before re-joining Lidl as their Head of CSR/Sustainability in 2019.

It sounds like you went full circle with Lidl. That must’ve been a very interesting journey over the years?

It certainly was! I worked in many different functions with Lidl when I started, which was really exciting and interesting as I got broad experience in the food retail industry. It was also great to get out and do applied work as opposed to theory in college as I’m a very hands-on type of person.

I’ve always had a really strong interest in sustainability. As an undergrad studying geography and economics, there was a big focus on resource and environmental economics, as well as sustainable development. At the beginning of my career with Lidl, they were only just starting to embrace corporate citizenship and social responsibility, while not so much the sustainability side. I was very interested in sustainable business practices, so that’s when I decided to go back to university and do my PhD and also work as a postdoc, where the focus was on sustainable and responsible business management practices. What I really learned here was how to measure sustainability and translate it into business terms, in addition to the positive environmental impacts of sustainable business. In a nutshell, what’s good for the environment can be good for business too.

Following a number of years in academia, I returned to Lidl Germany as Head of their Sustainability Department. There, I was responsible for the environmental and also the social strategies to really drive and implement the sustainability agenda. I was also responsible for internal as well as external communications.

One of the most interesting turn of events during my time with Lidl was in 2020 when the company encountered farmers protesting against the retailer, with complaints that we were neglecting the supply chain. Even though Lidl didn’t deal directly with farmers, the company realised that there was a potential to provide support in the form of farmer advocacy on issues such as animal welfare. This led to us looking at the supply chain in its entirety, developing a successful programme which supported farmer’s interests and how as a retailer we could help them transition to higher animal welfare standards and future oriented farming.

Now, I’m delighted to return to Ireland and join such a professional and ambitious organisation with a really people-focused culture and a great commitment to sustainability.

ESG is a very broad ranging three letter abbreviation. With Tirlán in mind, can you tell us more about what Environmental, Social and Governance actually means?There is a lot of talk in the business world around ESG. Simply put, it refers to a business’s impact and two-way interactions with environment and society, as well as how robust and transparent its governance is. More specifically, it measures how a business integrates environmental, social and governance practices into operations, as well as the business model, its impact and its sustainability. In the agri-food-sector, it’s becoming increasingly important to reduce the environmental footprint and to report on it. As a result, it is a very dynamic area with plenty of new requirements and changes happening. At Tirlán, there are a lot of activities already underway from an ESG point of view; it’s a matter of tying these together and adding a little more structure and strategic outlook. There’s already so much going on in the organisation and a fantastic pool of knowledge and talent working on the Living Proof agenda. My aim is to further develop our sustainability strategy, to drive its execution and to strengthen the governance mechanism within the organisation to really push the sustainability agenda from an environmental and social perspective. That starts with asking a range of questions – how are our teams structured around ESG, how are decisions made around it and how do we make sure that we are fully compliant with the reporting aspects? We’re operating in a highly dynamic environment so it’s about translating everything that’s happening outside of Tirlán from a sustainability governance, regulatory and political perspective, understanding what this means for our organisation and developing proactive strategies around that to achieve the targets and progress required of the agri-food sector.

Following your first weeks here, what are your first impressions of Tirlán?

From an ESG perspective, Tirlán has a strong heritage of implementing environmental health and safety mechanisms, which is an excellent basis for good and strong sustainability management. There are a lot of experts already working together in the Sustainability Hub on these matters and I think for people that are not so close to this team, they might not realise how many people are already involved in sustainability and ESG related issues. The task in hand now is to structure all ongoing activity, making it transparent and ensuring everyone across the organisation is strategically aligned. I really must pay a lot of credit to what has been done already. The Living Proof strategy, the targets that have been communicated and the activity that’s already taking place are a great foundation and have put us in a good position to achieve our targets over the time frames that we’ve set out.

From a personal perspective and a more general perspective of Tirlán, I’m really delighted to have joined. It is hard to know what to expect when changing jobs, but as soon as I arrived in Abbey Quarter I felt very at home. This is due to a number of factors. One is the level of professionalism and business excellence which is comparable to any high-level international organisation. Another aspect that is impressive is the fact that Tirlán is a farmer owned cooperative. It shows how business can be done in a socially responsible way through cooperation.

Most importantly, there’s a very strong commitment to sustainability, which is fantastic – Tirlán is really positioning itself as a future oriented company. And of course, what makes all this work is the people. It’s a very people focused culture here with a little bit of a family feel which has been nice to experience – all while still hitting targets, which can sometimes be a difficult balance to achieve. People here at Tirlán are very committed, they work extremely hard and they’re dedicated to ensuring organisation’s success.

Looking in the short to medium term, what do you want to achieve in your new role?

That’s of course a very big question and there are a number of pieces we need to knit together to tell the story. Firstly, it is to review how do we work together to achieve our Living Proof targets. We have a very good foundation with our existing Living Proof strategy; now it’s about challenging it and then finetuning it to focus on results and progress. What’s going to be hugely important is the implementation and execution piece, documenting in an evidence-based manner how we are moving towards our targets and what actions and results we have achieved. A hugely important aspect for 2023 will be how we report on sustainability, thinking about the established reporting standards we want to adopt as an organisation and how we use them to help us drive our own agenda. Driving awareness of ESG KPIs within our business is hugely important as is our external stakeholder management – how do we let people know what we’re working on and what we have achieved? Showing what we’ve achieved and being evidence based is a very strong story – Tirlán has a lot to tell. We need to create that awareness amongst our customers and be a more proactive and confident about what we offer. And then of course, it’s about how we drive the sustainability agenda through our organisation by creating a culture in which every Tirlán colleague feels part of the sustainability agenda and understands how their actions make a difference – that’s hugely important in this journey. I really look forward to meeting more Tirlán folks over the coming weeks and months and achieving this together!

Tirlán catches the eye at FIE in Paris

Before Christmas, the Tirlán Commercial team continued with the launch programme for our company’s new identity by taking a stand at the largest Ingredients trade show in the calendar, FIE (Food Ingredients Europe). The show took place in Paris from December 6th to 8th and Tirlán had a great presence with an eye-catching stand, showcasing our new B2B packaging and our full range of dairy and plant-based solutions. Many Commercial team members attended the show to conduct customer meetings and build a strong pipeline of new leads.

Commercial team members (L-R) Ann Meaney, Aoife Herlihy, Lisa Robinson-Sweeney, Gwen Gould, Tess Kelly and Eve Mulcahy pictured at the Tirlán FIE stand in Paris

As part of Tirlán’s presence at the show, the Commercial team also had a wonderful opportunity to host a customer evening in the Irish Embassy in Paris with Ireland’s Ambassador to France Niall Burgess, where both he and Tirlán’s Director of Ingredients Aoife Murphy addressed the large gathering. The ambassador spoke of Tirlán’s “essence of being a company that is deeply local, but deeply global in its reach”.

Ireland’s Ambassador to France Niall Burgess addresses the crowd at the Irish Embassy in Paris

Speaking to Overherd, Head of Ingredients Marketing Ann Meaney told us: “Europe is a strategic market for Tirlán where we have built significant partnerships and relationships over the years. It was fantastic to get back to FIE and to have our own stand. Meeting customers face to face again is vitally important to maintain strong links and create new ones, especially as we’ve our new co-operative story to tell along with launching our new brand identity. The networking opportunity at the Irish Embassy was the cherry on top of a great few days with our team and customers in awe of the beautiful surroundings afforded to us by the Irish Ambassador.”