16 minute read
Eye on Exports
MEATof the MATTER
From the highs of the US lamb breakthrough to the not-so-highs of restrictive beef quotas, it is very much a mixed bag for Irish meat exporters as they head into the second half of 2022, writes EITHNE DUNNE.
The recent news that the path is now clear for Ireland to export lamb to the US undoubtedly marks the start of a new era for producers of sheepmeat here. e US is a huge market with a steadily growing appetite for lamb – something Irish suppliers will now hopefully be able to tap into.
Sheepmeat plants here can now formally apply for approval to export to the US. Minister for Agriculture,
Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue – who has described Irish sheep farmers as “world class” – said it is now up to the industry to get started on the approvals process. “I hope to see exporters take advantage of this niche opportunity as soon as possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bord Bia CEO Tara McCarthy noted that there has simply never been a better time for Irish companies to export lamb to the US: “Bord Bia research shows that lamb consumption is growing amongst consumers in North America, particularly in the younger age categories.” is burgeoning interest will be further stimulated through a three-year beef and lamb promotion in the
US. Starting this summer, Bord Bia’s ‘Working with
Nature’ campaign will see numerous marketing and promotional activities take place across the US between now and 2025.
According to Meat Industry Ireland (MII), the lamb import market in the US is over 160,000 tonnes in volume and currently dominated by imports from
Australia and New Zealand. It welcomes the fact that Irish lamb should be on US supermarket shelves within the next few months – just as soon as exporters complete the nal stages of the access requirements.
is latest news aside, the EU27 continues to be Ireland’s most important market for sheepmeat. Demand has traditionally been biggest in France, but both volume and value to certain other EU markets have been increasing in recent years – most notably Germany, Belgium and the Nordic countries.
ENCOURAGING TRENDS Beyond the EU27, there are some encouraging trends. Bord Bia notes that Switzerland, for example, took €23.5m worth of Irish sheepmeat in 2020 – up from just €15.3m in 2019. Meanwhile, one of the State food board’s top priorities is securing direct access to China for Irish sheepmeat. is is because China continued to drive the global sheepmeat market in recent years; its imports during the rst quarter of 2021 alone came to 123,460 tonnes – up from 99,378 during the same period in 2020.
Last year, tighter global and EU supplies of sheepmeat, combined with a stronger demand in general, created an extremely positive market for Irish produce. is was re ected in the strong growth in value (15% up on 2020) despite a 9% drop in export volumes. Irish exporters bene tted from reduced exports of sheepmeat from the UK and falling production in the rest of the EU. ere was also less New Zealand lamb available in our key export markets.
Speaking in the Dáil in February, Minister McConalogue said that tighter supplies – and the redistribution of those supplies – have certainly helped to drive higher export values for Irish producers, adding that it is a trend that looks set to continue throughout this year.
However, while the expected 2% reduction in EU sheepmeat production this year creates opportunities for Irish exporters – particularly in the absence of international imports – it also creates challenges.
“Lower availability of product results in higher retail prices, a reduction in dedicated shelf space and ultimately a negative impact on consumption,” says Bord Bia’s latest Export Performance and Prospects
report. “As a result, the EU Commission has forecast a 1.8% decline in sheepmeat consumption during 2022.”
GENERAL CONTEXT Although sheepmeat constituted the biggest growth area last year, our largest meat export continues to be beef. According to Bord Bia, beef exports in 2021 were worth about €2.1bn, an increase of 9% on the previous year. Meanwhile, pigmeat exports were worth €542m, down 3%, and poultry €128m, a fall of 15%. e Minister for Agriculture pointed out earlier this year that the average 2021 price for pigmeat was marginally lower than the ve-year average. “ is reduction in price has occurred in tandem with an increase in input costs, causing serious di culty for the sector,” he said.
Department o cials, he said, are continuing to monitor the situation, and seeking ways to help pig farmers through what he termed a “signi cant market disturbance”.
According to Bord Bia, although China continues to be Ireland’s biggest export market for pigmeat, a slowdown in demand there meant that most of last year’s growth was driven by other Asian markets such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
With regard to beef, the Minister said that the outlook for Irish exports to the EU27 and the UK is very positive for this year. “Global market demand seems set to remain good as global supplies look to be tight as a result of pressure on output from both North and South America,” he said.
However, MII has warned that action is needed to address quota barriers on beef exports to the US market. e quotas Irish exporters normally operate under are being used up far earlier in the year than previously – as early as April this year, for example.
“ is means that since April Irish beef sales into the US market [valued at €36m for 7,000 tonnes] are facing a 26% import duty, which is clearly prohibitive to trade,” said Cormac Healy, Senior Director, MII.
Balancing Security and Convenience
Phil Goff, Head of Cybersecurity Channel Engineering at Cisco advises on mitigating the risks of hybrid working to find a balance between data security and convenience
Although Cisco’s own employees have been hybrid working for many years already, the last two years have accelerated the trend globally for their customers. Phil Goff, Head of Cybersecurity Channel Engineering, EMEAR at Cisco, reflects, “Organisations have had to make some changes pretty quickly, whereas in the past, they would have taken time to plan, implement and review risks.”
Previously, when all an organisation’s employees and, crucially, all their data, were centralised in one office or data centre it had advantages from a security point of view: “You had clear boundaries, clear perimeters that you could defend and protect with security technologies. That’s completely changed.”
Now, Goff says, with people “working from pretty much wherever they want to—cars, airports, coffee shops, etc.—and the advent of cloud computing, a lot of those perimeters have broken down. In a lot of cases now, an organisation’s data is possibly in a different country, or on a different continent. All that does is to complicate the security story.”
With few organisations willing to publicly admit to security breaches, unless their hand is forced by statutory requirements, Goff says it can be hard to quantify the increase in attacks that have occurred over the past number of years.
EMPLOYEE EDUCATION His number one piece of advice to any size business owner is first and foremost to educate their workforce, whether that be something as simple as keeping your screen angled so other people can’t see it if you are working in a coffee shop or public place and changing passwords regularly if you are working on confidential information.
He notes, “If you make security policies too difficult, people will tend to find ways around them. If you make your password policy so long that people can’t remember that password, they’re going to write it down, and they’re going to stick it on a sticky note on the back of their keyboard, so there’s always a balance.”
TARGETING TRENDS In terms of trends in how businesses are being targeted, Goff says “ransomware is still pretty high on the list”.
Email is the number one attack vector: “People get emails, they see Phil Goff Head of Cybersecurity Channel Engineering, Cisco
interesting links, and it’s human nature to want to click on a link,” he says.
With even the smallest organization relying on information and information systems, Goff warns, “It could be the end, as far as some organisations are concerned if they don’t have access to their data. There are some very simple steps you can take to defend against those, but no solution is 100 per cent guaranteed, because there are many attack vectors.”
To this end, many small businesses look at managed security services, such as those that Cisco offer, to give them peace of mind. “One of the challenges with security solutions is they can be very complex. They require a level of experience and knowledge that small businesses may not have.”
MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION After educating the workforce about security, the next important step, Goff advises, is, “make sure that whoever is connecting in is who they say they are”.
While he underlines that “passwords are always the first stage”, he adds, “We’re moving to what we call multi-factor authentication.”
Many people are already familiar with this from making purchases online, where they are asked to input a code that is texted to their phone.
“Using technologies like Duo from Cisco gives us the option to
have multi-factor authentication— so that is something you know, which is your password, something you have, which is your phone, or something you are, which would be a fingerprint or a retina scan.” He cites Touch ID on the newer model MacBooks, and Face ID on phones as other widely used examples of this.
When talk turns to password managers, which automatically remember your passwords for you, he suggests, “You have to trust that technology. Research suggests that it is secure, and it can be trusted, but again, nothing is ever 100 per cent guaranteed. It comes back to a balance between security and convenience for the user; you need to find that middle ground which is acceptable. When you add multifactor authentication like Touch ID or Face ID, for instance, that bumps the security up to a whole different level.”
ZERO TRUST Another pertinent issue, particularly for small businesses, is ‘Zero Trust’. In a nutshell, this means only giving employees access to what they need to do their work—the very bare minimum systems access they need to do their job.
“I’ve seen organisations, for instance, where they don’t have individual logins, they just use the admin account because it’s easier, and if you use the admin password, there is nothing you can’t do on that system.” Nobody wants their colleagues poking around in their HR files, he jokes. On a more serious note, he warns, “If somebody compromises your login, then they have full access to that system.”
While this does mean extra work for IT staff to ensure all the permissions are set correctly, the upside is that in the event of an employee’s user account being compromised, “you’re restricting and limiting the access that the compromiser has to that environment.”
He adds, “It’s important to say that ‘Zero Trust’ doesn’t mean an organisation is not trusting their employees, but they want to make sure that they have access to the appropriate data—a company’s data is probably one of their most valuable assets—so we do trust users, but we trust them to do their job and we give them the access they need to do that job.”
For enquiries email Ireland.Cisco@exertis.com or visit exertis.ie/cisco-info
Serial entrepreneur Garret Flower has always had a good nose for an idea with growth potential. With his latest venture Wayleadr, he is striving
to solve workplace parking problems in an increasingly flexible working world. OUTOF THE PARK
ENTREPRENEUR: GARRET FLOWER
Q: What factors influenced your entrepreneurial drive?
Garret Flower (GF): Looking back on my early days growing up in Longford, it’ s clear that I would have always been an entrepreneur. I was surrounded by inspiring people who had an entrepreneurial air. I was lucky and fortunate to have incredibly encouraging parents who had tried multiple businesses themselves.
One of my friends in college in Dublin was Devan Hughes, who was also very entrepreneurial-minded. Living in Temple Bar, we spotted an opportunity to provide a space for people to go before heading out to pubs and clubs. We charged €10 a head for drink and food and an average of 40 people would turn up a night. is really kick-started my entrepreneurial ventures.
We went on to start a number of businesses together in the renewable energy space. ese never made it past the last recession but laid the foundations for the journey. Devan is now running the successful Irish grocery delivery service Buymie. I truly believe entrepreneurship will be as common as plumbing in a few years’ time as people are starting to realise how bene cial it is to follow your dreams.
Garret Flower, Founder and CEO, Wayleadr.
ACCELERATING WITH SODEXO
Wayleadr was the only Irish company to be accepted into the Sodexo UK and Ireland Accelerators programme in May. Over 400 start-ups applied, and Wayleadr was one of 21 selected to pitch at live events in London and Dublin. The ten-week programme will allow Wayleadr to test, refine and adapt its proposition in a live operational environment, supported by Sodexo. “The world is becoming more flexible about where and how people can work. We provide a quick, awardwinning solution to solve the pain of flexible parking management for offices. As a world leader in services that improve quality of life, Sodexo recognised that and made the smart, forward-thinking decision of opening up its portfolio to new, innovative and impactful technology,” says Wayleader Founder and CEO Garret Flower.
Q: What motivates you to start and run businesses?
GF: For me it has generally been less about the passion initially for a particular area, but more that I’m creating something new. For example, with Krüst Bakery, which I founded with Rob Kramer in 2012, I knew nothing about baking – and I still don’t. Starbucks was growing fast at the time and we felt we could create a better version incorporating a bakery. I could see people’s positive reactions to the pastries we were selling and it became clear to me this was a great industry to be in. Within three years we were employing several hundred staff.
Krüst Bakery was really exciting, but I got burnt out and had to take time off and exit the business. After that I started to look for new ideas. The big thing for me was to find something that created meaningful solutions to the world’s problems and that I could see a future in. One day while struggling trying to park my car, I noticed open space in front of people’s driveways and thought: ‘Why not rent out driveways in the same way as Airbnb rents out houses?’.
Q: How did this lead to you setting up proptech start-ups?
GF: I am a firm believer that if you put yourself in the right position and make the effort you’ll get the results. I was doing a catering event for Krüst and saw a tech team pitching a new idea for a marketplace for gyms. This inspired me to build out the minimum viable product for Parkpnp – a marketplace for parking. I knocked on doors to sign up renting space and scaled to 24,000 spaces within four years.
I then started to realise there was also an opportunity in enterprise parking and went from the B2C model to B2B software-as-a-service with ParkOffice in 2016. This was a great lesson for me: that sometimes as an entrepreneur where you begin is not where you end. And you won’t get to the Holy Grail unless you’re open to this.
Now rebranded as Wayleadr, we try to understand the unsolved problems customers are experiencing and address those using technology. We are quickly eliminating all parking management pains and adding flexibility to the office through software.
Our vision is reimagining the last mile of every journey by connecting smart buildings and vehicles, saving more time and curbing carbon emissions. The technology is a stepping stone to autonomous driving where vehicles and buildings will require the right infrastructure to communicate with each other.
Q: How are you growing and developing the business?
GF: Founded in Ireland, Wayleadr is now headquartered in New York. We are a growing company that has clients in over 21 countries from New Zealand to Los Angeles and we are now seeing some exciting growth in the US market. Our latest funding was led by Third Prime, a US venture capital firm that specialises in next-generation proptech companies.
The US$4m investment is enabling Wayleadr to rapidly expand its global footprint and client base, which currently features high-profile companies such as eBay, Sanofi, L’Oreal, CBRE, WeWork and more. It will also result in a doubling of the team size across the US and worldwide to around 50 people and allow us to build out a new product to help residential tenants and landlords across the world to save time and cut down on carbon.
