SECTOR F OCUS
BMD & Co Balbriggan facility.
B M D & CO B UILDING IT S T E A M AS IT UNVEILS E XC ITING PLANS FOR THE FUTURE As BMD & Co is set to see a jump of 40% in its turnover this year, managing director MIKE WALSH speaks with Robbie Cousins about career opportunities with the innovative mechanical engineering contractor.
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echanical process engineering contractor BMD & Co has been in operation for almost 50 years. Originally set up as a subsidiary of the Bowen Construction group, when the Cork building firm went into liquidation in 2011, a management team, comprising John Allen, Paul Keegan, Nicholas Lynch, Frank O’Keeffe and Mike Walsh, completed a buyout of the company, saving over 200 jobs in the process and setting BMD on a new and exciting path. For a number of the intervening years, BMD focused its attention on securing its stability by pursuing opportunities in the southern market by providing a range of specialist mechanical and process services, primarily in the pharma and biopharma sectors. In 2019, Israeli industrial design specialists Meptagon bought a majority stake in the company. This opened up a number of new opportunities for BMD, including expanding into the Dublin and Leinster region.
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Reflecting on the past 10 years, Mike Walsh, Managing Director, BMD & Co, says that 2019 was a significant year in the company’s development. “We had managed to stabilise and grow the business following the management buyout in 2011, which was an awful time for the sector. In 2019, when Meptagon took a majority stake in the company, several new opportunities opened up for us, including expansion into the Dublin market.”
DUBLIN EXPANSION
BMD purchased a manufacturing facility in Balbriggan and started to build a new team headed up by Kevin McKiernan. He took up the role of director with responsibility for the Leinster region. Walsh continues: “We purchased a 60,000 sq foot-manufacturing plant in Balbriggan in 2019 and brought in Kevin McKeirnan to build the Leinster team. We carried out a comprehensive refit, including the installation of a €2m cleanroom facility, which includes a class-10 area with
