Each month, we put the spotlight on a Glanbia Ireland employee and for our August newsletter, we’re talking to Co-Op Operations Manager Niall Trainor

Co-op Operations Manager, Niall Trainor, is part of a close-knit team based out of Dungarvan which looks after the affairs of 11,000 co-op members, some active in farming, some retired and others deceased.

“Before Project Destiny our team of seven, based in Dungarvan in Waterford, operated in a separate entity from the Glanbia Ireland team. We are now delighted to integrate into the wider Irish business and its 3,500 employees.

“The past few years in particular have been very interesting with lots of growth and change. The acquisition of a stake in the Consumer and Agri businesses in 2017 has enabled us to get close to our colleagues in those businesses through the operation of Trading Bonus and other schemes. I’m lucky to be part of an experienced and committed Co-op team that has dealt with all the change with minimal fuss.”

The Cavan native now lives in Tramore in Waterford, the perfect base from which to pursue his downtime interests in music and theatre, cycling, swimming and “playing bad golf”, Niall says.

There is a great degree of variety in Niall’s role which varies over the calendar year and is also impacted by one-off projects such as Destiny. Many of the key items on the agenda for Niall and his team at the moment stem from Project Destiny, with the completion of the latest spin out of shares to members a key priority. Serving the needs of the Society membership, supporting the Society Council and managing day to day governance requirements form part of the “regular” job.

“Glanbia Ireland has been on a long and sometimes arduous journey over the past decade or more. Going back to our roots as a Co-op owned business augurs well for the future for all concerned. This journey started back in 2012 and it has been a gradual transition since then.

“It’s great to be an Irish business that is 100% Co-op owned. We can continue to run the business commercially but also have some flexibility to support farmers through tough times. It’s critical that we deliver on our promises now, take stock for a while and that we nurture this fantastic business that delivers for our shareholders and for farming communities in provincial Ireland.”

Overherd catches up with the Glanbia Ireland Ingredients Team – Dubai Office

Glanbia Ireland is well established in the Middle East and Africa, supplying dairy products to the region for the last 20 years. The team has grown over the years and there are now eight GII staff at our Dubai office, who are dedicated to growing the business across the Middle East and Africa (MEA). To learn more about the team and its ambitions, Overherd caught up with Kieran Duggan, General Manager for MEA who relocated from Ireland to the UAE in 2013 to develop the Glanbia Ireland business.

Kieran, please tell us about Glanbia Ireland’s activity in the MEA region.

We established our regional office in Dubai UAE in 2010. This was prompted by the impending removal of milk quotas in Europe and the need for Glanbia Ireland to establish direct routes to market in the region. We have had tremendous growth across the region over the past decade and now have a team of eight permanent staff working from this central sales hub.

Our primary business in the region is the supply of our range of dairy ingredients to B2B customers. These products include fat-filled milk powder, cheese, milk proteins, butter, whole milk powder and skimmed milk powder. These are the key building blocks for dairy finished product manufacturers in the region. As this is a milk-deficit region, as our customers grow, they must import more products. Our key markets in the Middle East region are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. In Africa, we have key supply positions in Algeria, Egypt, Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo.

Why is Irish produce attractive to Middle Eastern customers?

Ireland has long been recognised as a key supplier of dairy ingredients and Glanbia Ireland, as the largest processor of milk in Ireland, has a very strong position in this space. The MEA region imports from the key dairy-producing regions in Europe, the US and Oceania. With the removal of milk quotas, our annual production has grown significantly over the last five years; Glanbia Ireland processed over three billion litres of milk in 2021 from our 5,000 family farms. This increase in production has been attractive to buyers and brought Ireland as an origin for supply to greater attention. Buyers seek out European supply given its closer regional proximity to the USA and Oceania and the challenges of the supply chain during Covid-19 brought this into more focus.

What challenges has Glanbia Ireland faced exporting to the MEA?

Business in the region has been traditionally conducted face-to-face. It requires investing time with the customer, understanding their needs and wants and responding to them in a timely manner. There is an expectation that a supplier invests in the region if they are going to secure business continuity. Taking a position to establish our customer-facing sales team in the region demonstrated this intention and has opened opportunities for us, year-on-year. We are close to the key markets, working in their time zone and sensitive to changes in market conditions. Post-Covid and the widespread adoption of virtual meetings does help the ability to access key customers once a relationship has been established, but new business development needs to still be led by feet on the ground.

Our colleagues in Dubai are pictured from left to right Paul Costello, Regional Manager West Africa; Kieran Duggan, General Manager MEA; Parveen Kasim, Customer Service; Keren Aguinaldo, Customer Service; Nitin Agarwal, Regional Manager, Middle East. Also part of the team but not included in the photo are Vipan Kumar, Regional Manager, Indian sub-continent; and Karim Yacoubi, Regional Manager, North Africa.

What are the future plans for the region?

We see continued growth in our fat filled milk powder portfolio and will respond to the development in this category. There is significant innovation happening within this space. Our Millac brand has a long legacy in the region and gives us a very good position from which to build on the next generation of products. We also continue to build on our range of branded solutions tailored to respond to customer challenges.

Our CheddMax functional cheese solutions range provides performance benefits to processed cheese recipes but also as ready-to-use solutions such as tabletop, retail, foodservice and as an ingredient cheese. Our Opti-Yo range provides a range of solutions for yogurt manufacturers including high-protein solutions, low lactose solutions or indeed, plant-based solutions. We are still at the early stages of our journey in foodservice and B2C in the region, but see good opportunities in some niche categories such as cheese and UHT Cream. We are present in foodservice with the Wexford brand across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and use a number of appointed distributors.

For Irish companies to be successful in MEA, we must reach out and invest time and resources. We must be sensitive to their culture, ways of working and traditions. It’s a large region and a critical assessment of the business opportunity must be done in advance. We work with government agencies like Bord Bia and network across business industries in each target country. This way, we plan to continue to develop strong relationships with our customers and potential customers in the MEA region.

GI’s customer service programme is bearing fruit and improving customer experience across the board

Launched in February this year, Glanbia Ireland’s customer service programme ‘You Are The Difference’ aims to enhance our Agri and CountryLife customers’ experiences across our branch network (read more about the programme from the March edition of Overherd).

The program is designed to introduce a cultural shift in the way branch colleagues interact with customers, using methods and techniques that lead to increased customer satisfaction and increased sales.

As part of ‘You Are The Difference’, mystery shoppers have already visited all 52 retail branches and will pay them all another visit before the end of the year to see how the programme is progressing. Following the first round of visits, a fantastic 16 branch colleagues achieved a high score of over 80% during the mystery shop!

They are:

Another to be recognised was Mark Morrissey, who is our Branch Manager in Bunclody. Mark (left) is pictured with Senior Operations Manager Robert Kehoe, who presented him with a gift voucher recently. Congratulations to Mark and everyone else who’s been making a positive difference to customers’ experiences.

Glanbia Co-op’s new collaboration hub is currently undergoing its fit-out stage, so it won’t be long until colleagues occupy our brand-new offices at the Abbey Quarter in Kilkenny

As anchor tenants, our company will be located in a state-of-the art building which forms part of a wider 645,000 ft squared development of mixed use residential, commercial, retail, educational and civic spaces.

The building design has been thought of in a post-pandemic world and shaped with today’s, modern employee in mind. Three core principles of Connecting with people and place, Collaborating to realise potential and Complementing a hybrid lifestyle form the vision of how the building will operate. It’s built to enhance the work lives of all employees and advance our company’s ambitions.

Colleagues from three GI offices in Kilkenny will soon be calling the Abbey Quarter their base and Overherd at Glanbia Ireland was keen to get some thoughts on the big move!

Jane is currently based at our Purcellsinch offices in Kilkenny where she works in E-commerce / Marketing as part of the Agri team. Having started with Glanbia Ireland in 2019, about six months before the pandemic began, Jane has some very recent experience of moving from being full-time in the office to fully remote and she’s now enjoying the hybrid lifestyle.

Overherd at Glanbia Ireland caught up with Jane to get her thoughts on the upcoming move to Abbey Quarter and what this will mean for her working day.

You’ve been through the pandemic and hopefully out the other side! Through all these changes, what have you learned about your ways of working?

When Covid hit and we went to fully remote working it was a big change for all of us but as I got used to it, I found it fitted in better with my day-to-day life. Now that we’re in a hybrid style of working, I’m in the office one or two days a week. In general, I think I prefer working from home, but when we were at home for so long, I really welcomed the opportunity to go back to the office. If I had to pick a particular way of working now, I’d have to say hybrid is my preferred approach.

What do you feel are the advantages of going into the office rather than working from home full-time?

It’s purely the human interaction, the social side of things, being able to grab a quick coffee with someone rather than having to set up a formal meeting online. I suppose things just feel a bit more natural meeting people face to face.

With the move to Abbey Quarter on the horizon, have you been down to the site yet? Is there anything you’re looking forward to when you’re working from there?

I haven’t had the chance to go down there yet but I’ve been excited by what I’ve seen so far during the info sessions about the move – it looks unbelievable! I’m looking forward to experiencing the different ways of working and the different spaces the building will offer. In Purcellsinch at the moment, it’s very much just desks and meeting rooms, whereas what we’ve seen with Abbey Quarter is there are many more collaborative spaces, there will be opportunities to work cross-functionally and nice places to even just go for a chat. I think the likes of the modern canteen, training rooms and the gym will contribute to people’s work life balance as having all those things under the one roof will make the building not just work focused.

How do you think you will use the building? Will you go into AQ for a defined number of days per week?

I’m actually really eager to go in, firstly to see the building, but going forward I’m looking forward to splitting my time between home and Abbey Quarter. Having the option to book a desk and park my car for a few hours in the morning, meeting people face to face in the collaborative spaces and then going home to work for the afternoon having met friends for coffee in town are all nice options to have. As the building is built with hybrid working in mind, I think it will encourage me to go into the office more and make the most of its features and everything else Abbey Quarter and Kilkenny have to offer.

Abbey Quarter will have a lot of technology built into it, such as the desk booking and car parking apps. How do you feel about these aspects of the building?

I’m very open to them. I suppose it will be like trial and error, I have a bit of apprehension about how they’re going to work, like will I book a parking spot and find someone else has taken it? But it will be interesting to see how it all works in practice and I think if everyone uses the tech to its full potential, it will work very well.

What about the new building’s sustainability credentials. Is this something that’s important to you?

From what I’ve seen, sustainability was a key focus in the design of the building, which is great as it’s really important. Having things like the smart control lighting and spaces for bicycles and charge points for electric cars is really positive. Even the fact that employees know they’re in a sustainable building and working for a company that supports this adds to job satisfaction.

Muireann is a Kilkenny woman living just over the border in Co Laois. She originally started working with Glanbia in 2014 and left for a brief while in 2018 before re-joining Glanbia Ireland in 2020 as a Financial Accountant, just as the pandemic was kicking off in Ireland. Having only been in the Danville office sparsely since re-joining the company, Muireann told Overherd that she’s “very excited about the move to Abbey Quarter”.

What are you particularly looking forward to about the move to Abbey Quarter?

I suppose the Glanbia brand is synonymous with Kilkenny and the southeast, so to be going into such a state-of-the-art building on what was the old Smithwick’s site, which was also a very big Kilkenny brand, makes me feel very proud and fortunate to get to work in this building.

From what I’ve seen, I think walking into the atrium part of the building every morning will be special. It’s so bright, airy and open and will set a nice tone for the day. Being in the centre of town is also a nice bonus, being able to meet people for lunch and get out for a walk in the public spaces around Abbey Quarter.

You’ve been learning about the new building through some information sessions recently. Is there anything that’s stood out for you from these sessions?

We spend so much time in our lives working, so to be able to do so in such a lovely building with lovely surroundings is a big positive. Also, with me living 35 minutes from the office, having the ability to work flexibly is very appealing to me. As a function, Finance interacts with most parts of our business, so I think working in an environment which is designed for collaboration can only be a major positive.

The information sessions were great and it’s incredible how much work has gone into this project. The team behind it has obviously thought of everything and real credit must go to them. The building is so bright and importantly it’s been built in and will be run in the most sustainable manner. Added to that, the design concept of blending industrial architecture with materials and colours taken from the Irish landscape perfectly reflects our brand and the site AQ is on.

Do you feel our new offices will enhance your hybrid lifestyle?

I’d see myself working at least two days a week in the office and going in for full days. I’m an early bird who likes getting the more intensive tasks done early in the morning, so I’ll probably be one of the first people in the office each day. Ideally, I’ll probably do my work from home towards the end of the week. What the lockdown has taught me is that the opportunity to go for a walk at lunchtime is now a priority in my day and it’s a refreshing break from the computer. The location of Abbey Quarter is perfect for this with the lovely river walk. I see myself bringing the best of what I’ve learned during lockdown into the office as well.

I think the ability for the office to work around people’s lives will drive efficiency because people will be happy to be in their new surroundings and getting the best of both worlds. I’m really looking forward to getting into the office, if only for two days a week to build new relationships with colleagues. I’m looking forward to the mix of working on more social and collaborative tasks when in Abbey Quarter and the more head down, intensive tasks when working from home.

Rory started with Glanbia Ireland in February 2019 and was based in Ballyragget up until the pandemic began. Since then, he’s been mainly working from home in Waterford. He’s looking forward to the Abbey Quarter move and connecting with colleagues again a couple of days a week or as is required in his role.

Being based in Waterford, how do you feel about the move to Abbey Quarter?

I live in Waterford City, so I’m looking forward to shaving a good bit of time off my commute when compared to the time it took to get to Ballyragget, which used to take me over an hour. All going according to plan and getting into the office during non-rush-hour periods, the journey should take about 45 minutes. Combine this with hybrid working and it will be better for my pocket and the environment.

I was lucky to get a tour of Abbey Quarter back in March. The fit-out hadn’t started at that stage but even then, it was easy to see how impressive the building would be when complete. As part of the old brewery, it looks like a unique building; the entire place looks open with bright spaces and it’s well thought out with the neighbourhoods for different departments. The views out the windows are impressive, especially the top floor with the views over the city.

Connecting and collaborating with colleagues is a big part of the building design. Are you looking forward to these elements of being back on-site?

There’s a good bit of collaboration as part of my role, mostly in the commercial function itself, which is quite large. I’m really looking forward to connecting with colleagues in my own function but also other parts of the business. Working from home definitely has its advantages but I have missed the social side of being in the office. Added to that, I think you get a better feel for what’s going on in other parts of the business through informal chats when getting a coffee or just bumping into people. With the new offices, there seem to be so many communal spaces and open areas that it will make it easy to catch up with people in an informal way, whereas I feel conversations on Teams generally have to be set up and are more formal.

Presumably there’s a strong external focus to your role too. Has the Customer Experience Centre been brought to life for you?

The Customer Experience Centre is really going to add value to our business. We’d have a number of customers that visit us regularly and it will give us the opportunity to showcase all that’s best about our ‘NewCo’, its people, purpose vision and values. It will also help us to position NewCo with new and existing customers as one of Europe’s leading processors, with deep ties within the local farming community and an inspiring range of value add dairy and plant based ingredient solutions.

How do you feel the office will fit around your lifestyle?

I’m really looking forward to using the gym. I think the modern office requires a gym, it really encourages people to get active which is good for physical and mental wellbeing. Another thing I’m looking forward to is access to Kilkenny City. Being from Waterford and based in Ballyragget, I haven’t gotten to experience Kilkenny that much, so the advantage of being in the heart of the city is being able to find some good spots for lunch and coffee, or even go for a drink after work. And living close to the train station in Waterford, this also opens up new ways for me to commute if I want to leave the car at home.