Each month, we put the spotlight on a Tirlán employee. For our February edition, we’re talking to Lisa Robinson Sweeney, Product Manager for Cheese

I’m from the beautiful coastal area of South Dublin and I try to get out for a walk every day to make the most of it. I like to consider myself active (and so would my dodgy knee) and love doing group classes in the gym or hiking with my friends when the weather allows for it. Staying active is a huge motivator for me and allows me to perform at my best. I love trying new things and would quite literally turn up to the opening of an envelope.

I joined Tirlán in 2021 after taking a year out travelling in Australia and completing my Master’s degree in Food Business Strategy at UCD Smurfit. I originally joined on the graduate programme as a commercial associate and quickly moved into a permanent role as Product Manager for Cheese within the Ingredients Commercial team at the start of 2023.

What I love most about my role as Product Manager is the cross functional nature of it, where I get to interact with stakeholders across the business and work as a cross functional hub to deliver the best results for the business and our customers.

As well as getting to meet various stakeholders within the business, I love attending customer visits and tradeshows to meet our customers face to face and drive deeper relationships and symbiotic opportunities for both businesses. It’s great when we get the opportunity to host some of these customer visits in our new Customer Experience Room in Abbey Quarter and can really display our technical capabilities (along with a nice cheese board).

A big part of customer engagement is understanding our customers challenges and future needs. That is why it is so important for the Commercial team to stay on top of market trends, as well as emerging retail and foodservice trends within the cheese category so we can better help our customers to grow their business. A big trend in cheese is a move towards natural clean labels in which Tirlán were ahead of the curve in providing a clean label offering for colour cheddar and we are now the leading manufacturing of colour cheddar in Europe. Our marketing team are always on the lookout for emerging trends in cheese and attending tradeshows can play a huge part of seeing what’s out there and how we can deliver for our customers now and into the future.