Each month, we put the spotlight on a Tirlán employee and for our July newsletter, we’re talking to newly appointed Technical Sales Manager for South East Asia Ludovic Chesnay

Ludovic Chesnay has joined Tirlán and is shortly moving to Vietnam where he will take up the newly-created role of Technical Sales Manager for South East Asia.

The French-born pastry and bakery chef has over 30 years’ experience in the industry and brings a wealth of international expertise to the new post. He’s really looking forward to putting back on his chef’s whites and demonstrating Avonmore’s products to a captive foodservice industry in the region.

“My role is to look after the South East Asian market and be the link between Tirlán, our business partners (the importer/distributor) and the end user of Avonmore products. When you work with the retail sector, your role is to get product on the shelf and you know it will be consumed at home by a family or an individual.

“When you work with the foodservice industry, you need to be across all of the channels, all of the time. I love food, have worked all over the world and will bring all of this passion to the role. I have worked across Europe (France, UK, Germany and Switzerland)  for world-renowned pastry boutiques, restaurants and four- and five-star hotels.
“As a young pastry chef, I decided to cross the Atlantic, to work and lived in the USA and Canada. In Montreal, I went to Université du Quebec à Montreal (UQAM) to study management. My career then took me to the South Pacific – Australia and New Caledonia.

“I came back to Ottawa, Canada to share my culinary experience, teaching Culinary Arts at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa and later spent time in Dubai, working as the International Culinary Advisor to a big French dairy producer.”

Ludovic will be based in Ho Chi Minh city and is revelling in the new challenge. “I had been a little bit nervous about joining Tirlán. But I’m very happy. Our team is very multi-cultural and I’ve been made feel very welcome. Tirlán has allowed me help shape this role so I can demonstrate as well as storytell and sell. Tirlán is still a relatively new player in the UHT cream market in South-East Asia and the opportunities are endless. It’s very exciting.

“In my new role, I will be more involved with sales, with the end user. I will not just be talking about the product, I will be showcasing how it works, driving sales. I’m also really looking forward to storytelling, to reinforcing with the captive South-East Asian audience the grass-fed credentials, telling people about sustainable Irish farming, the weather, how the cows are cared for, how Irish farmers have been doing this for generations and are working with the land, will not compromise it and are caretaking for the next generation.

“There is still so much we can do in the areas of cream cheese, technical butter and more and I’m looking forward to working with the Innovation Centre and with marketing to help create a whole new range of products for the foodservice industry, which will, in turn, create more added-value opportunities for the products we make from quality milk from family farms in our area,” he said.

Asked how he likes to unwind, he said: “I love food and I love to cook. There is nothing like Wexford strawberries, Avonmore cream, sponge cake made from local produce and of course, a nice Irish gin and tonic. Local is best and I really enjoy the natural credentials behind great Irish food and produce.”

Tirlán’s Health & Safety campaign is all about protecting the people around you

Now in its second year, Tirlán’s ‘Don’t Walk By For July’ campaign is raising awareness of how colleagues can keep each other safe at work. The campaign is running across all sites, with a particular focus on operations and branches. The aim, says Tom Crosbie, Head of Health and Safety at Tirlán, is to raise risk awareness within the business and promote the ownership of safety between staff. “What we found last year was that a campaign like this improves the overall culture around health & safety. We’re taking a proactive approach to safety, as opposed to reacting when an accident happens.”

This July, employees are being asked to raise a good save card. The ‘save’ could be pointing out something on site that needs to be improved, a piece of plant and machinery that isn’t working properly or an obvious hazard that needs to be addressed. “Once it’s brought to our attention, we can get ahead of the problem. Nobody wants to see anyone get hurt so we’re reinforcing our philosophy of protecting the people around you. At the end of the day, we all want to go home safe.”

With last year’s inaugural campaign, about 200 additional good saves were raised. “We found that people’s awareness around safety was raised and that’s what we’re going for again this year. We want to heighten that awareness across all facets of the business, but particularly across all operational areas. To build on engagement the Health & Safety team, who have done tremendous work to engage our people over the last number of years, will be speaking at various forums and engaging with site managers, frontline managers and operators on the ground.”

From October last year to March 2023, zero lost time accidents were reported across all sites. “A small number of accidents have started to creep in again, so the time is right to focus on the proactive side of safety.” Tom says Tirlán is on a path to achieving world class safety performance. “Our aim is to achieve 0.42 Lost Time Accident Incidence Rate (LTIR) in 2023. By 2025, we want to achieve a world class status of 0.28. These proactive measures that we’re implementing, such as ‘Don’t Walk By for July’, are an important step towards achieving these targets.”

Over the next few months, Tom and his team intend to complete a H&S culture measure across all areas of the business. “That will give us a really good insight into the culture of safety on our sites. It will also inform what we need to concentrate on going forward. It’s like we’re firing darts at a board – we know we are firing in the right direction, but we need to up our game if we’re to hit the board every time.”

Advocacy in action on farm and in our Drogheda plant

Tirlán’s teams across our 11 processing facilities work hand in hand with our family farm milk suppliers to bring world-class, nutritious milk from grass to glass every single day. We also love to show first-hand, either on farm or at our sites, the dedication that goes into producing a top-quality product.

Three of our producers opened their farm gates to pupils from local primary schools recently and showcased to the next generation how they’re caring for their herds and proudly producing nutritious milk more sustainably than ever.

Meanwhile, a very enthusiastic group from St Brigid’s School in Dundalk also visited their local plant recently under the school’s ‘Walk Peer Programme’. The programme helps young people who have special educational needs and it supports them so they can successfully transition into the world of work.

The group really enjoyed their factory tour with Production Manager, Frank McDonnell, aided by Jamie Rogers (Env, H&S Manager) and Peter McGuinness (Quality Manager).

The tour finished with the group tasting of some of the 23 different milk blends produced each week in the Drogheda site, followed by a packed lunch in the boardroom. The class were a pleasure to have on site and they were very appreciative of the efforts made by all the Tirlán team. It was a win win for the Drogheda team, with a whole new group of consumers introduced to and delighted with their Mooju samples.

Recent visitors to our Innovation Centre in Ballyragget were impressed by our people and our commitment to sustainability

Tirlán welcomed a group of buyers from Southeast Asia to our Innovation Centre in Ballyragget recently, who were on a dairy trade mission to Ireland organised by Bord Bia.

The group was shown various applications and solutions from our dairy and plant-based portfolios and were extremely engaged in conversations around proteins, cheese, plant based and FFMP ingredients.

This was a collaborative effort from all the teams in Ballyragget, the R&D team and the Commercial and Consumer teams. Bord Bia and the Southeast Asia group were hugely impressed with our innovations, our people and the Innovation Centre.

The Southeast Asian Buyers Group who visited the Innovation Centre recently

Two days later a group of future farmers also visited the Innovation Centre where they were given various presentations, application work and demos. The future farmers were very impressed, with one commenting that “it’s easy to forget about the milk once it leaves the farm”.

Tirlán’s Head of Agri-Sustainability & Customer Engagement, Thomas Ryan, commented on how “it’s great to highlight our agri-business, ingredients, milk quality, sustainability & innovation expertise with this very important group of climate action change champions amongst our farm family suppliers.”

The Future Farmers Group pictured in Ballyragget recently

Each month, we put the spotlight on a Tirlán employee and for our June newsletter, we’re talking to Ailish Byrne

Newly appointed Director of Agribusiness, Ailish Byrne, has only been in the role since March 1 but says she can’t believe how quickly time has passed and how seamless her transition was from Head of Agriculture with Ulster Bank, where she worked for 20 years.

“In my earlier years, I would have had lots of direct interaction with farmers and in the latter stages in my former post, I had more engagement with the IFA, the Minister and other stakeholders in the sector. It all means that I am very comfortable with the high-level approach in my new role, the language, our customers and the sector as a whole.

“From day one, Tirlán took me on as me. They wanted my views. Listened to my ideas. I’ve only been here three months, but it seems longer. It’s an environment in which people’s ideas and opinions are valued and respected.

“We had over 40 people at our team strategy day. It was really positive, with lots of enthusiasm from everyone – there was fantastic interaction from the entire team. Tirlán is an environment which really values individuals for what they can bring to the table.”

In her role, Ailish leads the Agribusiness team. This includes ruminant, equine, pet, the 52 branches, CountryLife, all the marketing and loyalty programme teams as well as the grain and procurement teams.

“It is a very diverse team and our job is to ensure that our farmers, our shareholders and our customers have access to all the inputs they need to run their dairy, beef or tillage farm. There has also been a huge growth in step-out programmes such as FarmGen, E-Commerce and the Twenty20 Beef Club.

“What amazes me most is the level of continuous interaction with the representative structures. I knew joining that it is a cooperative, but I didn’t realise the level of engagement and the continuous interaction between those representative structures – the board, the council, the business itself. It keeps everyone up to speed, keeps vital information flowing. Keeps it all very real.

“I do a bit of tillage myself at our home in Crossneen, on the edge of Carlow town. We usually grow malting barley but I’m growing sugar beet and some peas this year. Being involved in farming, from my background and from my new role, I know the pressures there are this year. We are coming off a very strong 2022 for dairy and for grain. The pressures for 2023 are very real and we can all feel it.

“That said, we are a cooperative that is definitely true to our values. We are in business to make money but it’s also about getting the balance right, about competitively pricing our inputs so we can deliver the best possible milk and grain price for our farmer suppliers.”

And how does Ailish relax and unwind from it all? “My husband and I have two daughters, so lots of evenings and weekends are spent on the sidelines at football or soccer matches or at show jumping events. So not quite relaxing at times – a different sort of pressure from work.”