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EY CEO Outlook: The Co-op of the Future, with Jim Bergin, CEO, Tirlán
In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series, Jim Bergin, CEO of Tirlán, tells host Richard Curran the story of his 30-year journey to the top of one of Ireland’s best-known indigenous companies. Jim leads Tirlán during a very significant time for the company, with a recent restructuring from plc to cooperative, the creation of a new investment fund, and record farmgate prices.
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Coming from a farming family in Co Kilkenny, Jim Bergin has always understood the language of farmers, the pressures they face, and the values of the farming community. This knowledge has served him well throughout his lengthy career in the agri-food sector. He recently guided Glanbia Co-op as it transitioned to full control of the Glanbia Ireland dairy and grains business and it unveiled a new identity, ‘Tirlán’.
As Ireland’s largest farmer-owned food and nutrition business, Tirlán has a diverse portfolio of leading ingredients, consumer and agri brands, including Avonmore, Kilmeaden, Wexford, and GAIN Animal Nutrition. With a network of 11 high-tech processing facilities, 52 agri-retail branches, and over 11,000 members, the farmer-owned cooperative holds a very important position in the Irish economy. A recent Economic Impact Study by EY showed that Tirlán generated total economic activity of €5.5 billion in 2022. Moreover, it supports over 19,200 direct and indirect jobs spread throughout operations in 17 counties.
They also discuss:
- How Jim’s childhood as the only son of a small farmer still helps him to carry out his role successfully today.
- The differences and similarities between plc and cooperative company structures and his recent experience of changing Glanbia plc into Tirlán cooperative.
- The future of farming – reducing the national herd, incentivising increased biodiversity, and how new technologies will drive greater productivity.
- How Tirlán is adapting to cater for increasing demand for plant-based products.
- How Ireland can become less vulnerable to an unpredictable geo-political environment.
For your convenience, a full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Graham Reid, Partner and Head of Clients and Markets, EY Ireland
Welcome to the EY CEO Outlook Podcast series, where our host Richard Curran talks to some of Ireland's leading CEOs about leadership, lessons learned, and their future business plans. Hi, I'm Graham Reid, partner and head of Clients and Markets at EY in Ireland. In this episode, we welcome Jim Bergin, CEO of Tirlán. The farmer owned cooperative focused on bringing innovative Irish products and agri brands to the international marketplace. So over to you, Richard.Richard Curran, Journalist and Broadcaster
Thanks, Graham, and we hope you're enjoying this podcast series of interviews with CEOs. And thanks for listening to the EY podcast CEO Outlook Series. If you like what you've heard, hit follow or subscribe and leave a review and do subscribe because we have lots more big interviews with industry leaders in the weeks ahead. Well, my next guest on this episode is Jim Bergin, CEO of Tirlán, the Kilkenny based co-op, which paid out €2 billion to over 5000 Irish farm families last year for milk and grain. The former Glanbia co-op, it's been around a very long time yet in its own way, it's something entirely new. Jim You're very welcome.
Jim Bergin, CEO, Tirlán
Thank you, Richard.
Richard Curran
Something old and yet something brand new. Can you explain what that is, Jim?
Jim Bergin
That's right. Well, co-ops have been around since the turn of the century, really, And a lot of our local co-ops have been celebrating their 100 years. And, you know, they went through a whole evolution then. They were all local, first of all, and then some of them amalgamated. And in the 60s, we saw very significant amalgamation. And eventually, you know, they formed very large organizations like Avonmore and Waterford Co-op. And so that that principle has already has always been there really. But in 1988, then Avonmore Co-op and indeed Waterford Co-op, both of them IPO'd for good reason at the time. And the co-ops became dormant holding companies really. And then they merged in 1997. So since then we've had Avonmore Co-op as the largest investor in the PLC, or Glanbia PLC. And really I think there were seven staff in Glanbia Co-op during that time and the PLC became the identity and became the full operation of the group, if you like. So when we came to 2022 and when the co-op finally bought 100% of the Irish operations back from Glanbia PLC, the co-op didn't have a core staff, it didn't have a governance structure or an operational governance structure of its own. It had to change its identity and become, you know, a 3 billion operating business. So it has been a real privilege at the point I'm at in my career to be able to start back in the 1980s in a co-op, to work for a PLC for 34 years, really, and now to be able to reshape the co-op into an international organization again with its own identity and rekindle that bond with our co-op shareholders.
Richard Curran
And it's interesting because parts of that journey, as you've just outlined it, are similar, you know, to what maybe Kerry did or others did, where they floated and they had a PLC and then you had a co-op. But what's very distinctive about what you've done is where the co-op has ended up buying back so much of the assets that were originally part of the PLC. So instead of just owning shares in the PLC, it has become this co-operative, but very, very large processing and operating business.
Jim Bergin
No, absolutely. And the story of, you know, of the courage indeed of the managers, you know, Pat O'Neill and Stephen O'Connor, who launched on the stock exchange at that time in 1988, really approximately a broad estimate. They have generated about €3 billion for the for the farmer shareholders. There's about, I'm guessing, a billion in in where farmers directly own shares themselves. We have spun out 960 million to farmers since 2012, and there's a billion sitting in the balance sheet of the co-op today.
Richard Curran
This has been a cash machine.
Jim Bergin
It has been an incredible success story on behalf of our farmers. And, you know, and they retained the shares over the years, which was a very smart thing to do. And so therefore, you know, the co-op, it spun out this operating business generated significant wealth. And then with a small percentage of that wealth, has actually bought a fully a 3 billion organization now and a very, very good set of assets based here in Ireland.
Richard Curran
Not an easy task because the co-op essentially held investments in the PLC and now it is a very large and substantial business. How do you go then about hiring staff and all of that expertise which might have been handled within the PLC originally? You need a board, you need to put systems in place, and then you've got to decide what kind of organization you want to be.
Jim Bergin
Sure. Well, we've had a lead in, so there have been a number of steps here. So in 2012, the co-op and the PLC agreed effectively to spin out Glanbia ingredients Ireland. So that's the big processing engine in Ireland. And the quota, the milk quota was to be abolished in 2015. So it was a very significant structural move in 2012 where the co-op purchased 60% of Glanbia Ingredients Ireland from the PLC. So it was one of the operating businesses within the PLC. And since then we've had this independent business operating with an independent board. Now the board was the representatives of the co-op and representatives of PLC, but it has given us a lead in to the day when we acquired the full ownership. So in 2012, the ingredients business was put into the joint venture. And then in 2017, the agribusiness and the consumer business were included. And it was then called Glanbia Ireland. So we did have then a very large operating business within the joint venture, and that effectively was backed into the co-op. So the seven people who worked in the co-op as the holding company joined with the 2300 people that were in Glanbia, Ireland, and we became Tirlán.
Richard Curran
So if you look at Tirlán today and what it consists of, you have the ingredients business, you have the consumer foods business with brands like Avonmore and Kilmeaden that people would know very, very familiar with. And then you have the agri business part that they're the three operations strands. But then also you have still got 28% shareholding in the PLC on behalf of your members that that co-op, your co-op holds that and you also have plans then around a new investment fund as well.
Jim Bergin
That's correct. Yeah. So at the SGM in December of 2021, we got permission from our shareholders, number one, to acquire the remaining 40% of Glanbia Ireland. But also then to create this this investment fund. So the way we look at the organisation now is we have an operating business, what we call the core business, 3 billion of revenue. We have the investment in the PLC, which is about 1.1 billion. And then our shareholders gave us permission to sell up to 12 million shares, which is worth about 160 million as an investment fund. Now we're very relaxed about that fund really, because it today it's invested in Glanbia PLC shares and it generates a fine dividend as well. So whatever we invest in, we'll have to be good to justify selling those shares.
Richard Curran
And you're not going to be in a hurry basically, you're going to do the right things with it.
Jim Bergin
No, we'll be careful with it. Yeah. And we see it as, you know, a seed capital for starting, you know, potentially a, you know, more high margin businesses, which is what the PLC did originally. And it's that type of focus. We're not going to use it for internal capital or for maybe core operations. We will use it for an independent third income stream, if you like.
Richard Curran
The co-op model is a fantastic model that has served Irish farm families very well over many years. And then if anything, it became so successful that it needed to raise new capital. And that's why they floated on the stock market. And we had, you know, Glanbia and Kerry and so forth. But for you as a CEO, you know, do you have to have do you have to be a bit of a United Nations, Kofi Annan at times, because your members, your shareholders are you know, you're buying milk from them and you have to decide how much you're going to pay them for it. They own the business.
Jim Bergin
For me personally, it's a wonderful place to be because, you know, I grew up going to cattle marts on Saturdays in local villages, and I understand farming. I was an only son on a farm, on a small farm, so everything was very manual. So, you know, I learned what farming was like. I learned the language of farming as well. You know, what the what the pressures are. I worked with men in the field, so you know all of that and grew up in a rural village in North Kilkenny, in Ballyragget. That's right. So, you know, in my house, my mother was a very religious woman. My father, as I said, had two religions. It was farming and hurling. So, you know, at weekends I went to two masses. I went to three hurling matches. You know, that was that was that was what we lived on. And I used to be told to go to confession. But so, you know, when you grow up in that environment, well, then, you know, as you move along, you see the purpose of, of meeting farmers, you know, so part of our lives is that you meet farmers in local halls from 8:00 until 11:00 and you chat around everything. But I suppose to be able to understand them and to be able to identify with them, which I always have, well then you see the merit in all that. So I think nowadays they're not given all the credit that they should be given. They're really great managers and great people to run their businesses and they have run them successfully through many eras of change. And they give you plenty of tough love. You know, when we're out there, they give out to us and challenge us and do all of that and tell us plenty of things we're not doing. But at the back of it all, they'd say, you know, that give us a grudging respect, that we're keeping the place together and doing a reasonable job.
Richard Curran
And do you have to get out and about and meet a lot of the members through like farm councils and so forth?
Jim Bergin
Sure. We absolutely. So just to explain the co-op structure, there are 780 elected members in the co-op structure through a kind of area structure, then a regional structure which has about 300 members. And then there is an advisory council that has about 89 members. So I meet that advisory council with the chairman and my management team every month and we talk about everything. So we all give a report on what's happening and then they have plenty of time to challenge and question. And it's a great process.
Richard Curran
That's very tough. I mean, that's a big audience of people challenging and questioning every month, isn't it?
Jim Bergin
No, absolutely. And there's all the things you know, there's elections going on at different times and various other dynamics as well. But there's I think there is an underlying trust, and that helps a lot because, you know, and particularly now with the creation of Tirlán, there is only one shareholder and our focus is to maximize the return to that shareholder, and they trust that. So while they're not happy with things, you know, they like being heard as everybody does, and being listened to, and that we take action on what they say. So yes, there is a cut-in trust, You know, it can get, get pretty excited at times. But there is an underlying belief that we are all traveling here in the same direction. And for that reason, then, you know, we get on with it and there's a routine to it, you know, and all of that. But there's a general respect.
Richard Curran
You mentioned about growing up on a farm yourself originally from Ballyragget. Did you want to farm? Did you want to, you know, be a CEO? What was the career path in your own head when you were growing up?
Jim Bergin
Yeah. Well, if I if I was to say that I had any plan whatsoever to end up where I am now, it wouldn't be the truth. So I, you know, and I could tell you some of the stories about how I was appointed into some jobs and things like that. And, you know, there were accidental really. But I worked on the farm. You know, my father was a very driven man, worked very hard and a dominant man as well. So, you know, I was I was probably in my teens before I realized, you know, that there was a future to do something that was it and just went with it. But my parents took a very significant decision when I was 12, actually, and they sent me to a boarding school. I was the only son at home on a farm. And at that time, traditionally, you know, the eldest son was kept at home. But they sent me to boarding school and gave me a chance. And then I went to UCC and did a B. Comm. But the big decision came when I came home from UCC, so I farmed every summer while I was in college and when I was in secondary school. But when I came home from UCC and I got a job immediately in Avonmore, I did make a conscious choice to say, "Look what I'm going to follow this career and see where it goes".
Richard Curran
Was that a difficult choice?
Jim Bergin
It wasn't a difficult choice for me, but it was a very difficult position for my father. And he never objected, you know, and he was as I said, he was a very strong man. But he never objected. I'd say he struggled with it for a long time, to be honest. Privately, he did have a neighbour's son who worked with him. And therefore and the two of them got on really well because they were kindred spirits. And that filled a void in his life and, you know, and in his work. But I'd say I was 30 years of age when he might have acknowledged once that I was doing okay, you know, and he wasn't a man of a lot of praise or words like that. But it wasn't easy for him, you know.
Richard Curran
He was accepting of it. But not mad about it.
Jim Bergin
Correct. That's the way I put it. Yeah.
Richard Curran
It also meant then once you had the B. Comm and once you started working in Avonmore, you know, a local company that was becoming a big international company, did you want to travel? Because, you know, you have stayed locally and now the irony is you're running a business that is owned locally, managed locally, based locally, even though you're exporting to many countries around the world.
Jim Bergin
Sure. And I should tell you about a couple of summers. So I had a friend who was a teacher in UCC and we used to travel to matches together and things like that. And he got me a job one year in a company in Carrigaline. And, and I, you know, from a distance going to said to my parents, "I'm going to work there". And the truth is a couple of weeks before, before I was to go there, I bottled it and came home because I knew my father needed me at home. And the following year, my best pal, who's who still my best pal, suggested that we go to Nantucket and that we should go there for the summer. And again, you know. Yeah, great idea. Let's do that. And I bottled it and said, No, look, I have to go home. I need it at home. But beyond that, I've never had a travel bug, you know. And as I look back on it all now, I think it has been a great privilege to be able to live among my own people, you know, in the locality. I think it's very tough on executives who have to, you know, travel. During the week and come back to their families at weekends and all the emotion and tiredness and everything else that goes with all of that. So I think I have been privileged really to find myself where I am, you know, only to have travelled 17km between bases from my home, you know, in that length of time. And I've travelled extensively within the company and that has been enough for me.
Richard Curran
You've had a number of roles in Glanbia PLC, and then when the time came, you've ended up being CEO of the Co-op of Tirlán. Is it difficult to build a culture in what is an old institution in a way, but something that is brand new as well?
Jim Bergin
Yeah. It depends on where you're starting. If there's a bad culture in it, you know, and a lack of clarity, it is difficult. But, you know, I inherited a business that had been run by John Maloney for some time before that. And John was a great, great leader. So I think that the really important thing about culture is, is certain items of clarity, but then it's about the intangibles that exist within it. And, you know, again, the relationship I was working in the fields in the in the 70s and the factory was being built, you know, across the river from me. So I knew, you know, the type of people that worked there and where they were from and all that kind of thing. So I could tap into that, you know, local ethos and culture and the culture within the factory in Ballyragget, which was the biggest facility in the ingredients business, the culture was that we won't let it down. So, you know, you could argue with the unions over this and that and all the rest of it, but if somebody was in trouble at 2 a.m., the guys would get out of bed and come in and dig out stuff out of dryers or whatever, and that that thing of we won't let it down. So you had you had that.
Richard Curran
And that's real culture.
Jim Bergin
That's real culture in an organization. And the you know, I left the organization actually for a year back in 1986 and came to live in Dublin and to work in a in a small company out in Kildare, you know, and I learned a lot in that year about the decency that existed within the organization in Avonmore. And I went straight back and I always felt that I could build on that then, you know, and being one of them, you know, my mother was a teacher locally, so she actually taught some of them as well. He used to remind me a bit, but, but to be to be one of them and to be able to say, "look it come on, we can do better", you build something out of that and the types of leaders that you have and then how the leaders behave and the leadership team behaves. You know, you can set standards and you can maintain standards then that ultimately end up in a good culture.
Richard Curran
What for you is the core difference in how you run Tirlán as a co-op as opposed to if it was a PLC?
Jim Bergin
Not a lot, is the answer, first of all. So, you know, a PLC is driven by having a strategy, by having significant focus on operations, by having best in class governance, by having great HR and employee propositions. So, you know, the general list of all those items are the very same. And we say that we run it like a PLC. But then there is the co-op element and the co-op element, first of all is that that we have a single shareholder, which is farm families. And what is important to them is the return they get for their product. Now the return they get for their product is actually the same as a shareholder watching the appreciation of the share value in a PLC. The only difference is that in in the co-op that return for their product is within the PNL, whereas from the point of view of a PLC, it's the, it's the profit number in the PNL that generates that income for a shareholder.
Richard Curran
So with the PLC, it's like we've made a profit. This is how much we have. We're now going to pay a dividend based on that profit. But what you're saying is that because the ultimate owners of the co-op are selling a product, they're getting that return every week, every.
Jim Bergin
Month, every month.
Richard Curran
Rather than what's left over. But you don't have to keep an eye on the share price in the short term, and that takes away some of those pressures. But there's a whole other set of pressures, isn't there?
Jim Bergin
There is, yeah. Well, the proximity with the shareholder is, you know, is a big pressure, but it's a great level of accountability. And the very significant and important element is to have an underlying profit policy. So we have to borrow money. There are ratios that go with that, but we always want to be better than just living by the ratios. So if the board are comfortable and our shareholders understand that there is a level of profit here which enables us to sustain the business and to develop the business, well then you know, we can talk about the rest. But the other element then is that they know that whatever is left after we deliver and sustain that profit policy is for them. And you know, in the past I suppose where we had co-op and PLC at the same board, the co-op representatives kind of felt if they didn't get something that it was going to the PLC, which technically wasn't necessarily correct, but that was the emotion. Whereas now, you know, if we don't increase the price of something in a month, they know that the money that that could have been paid out is always there. It's there for them. So that brings an underlying level of trust also where decisions, you know, good quality decisions can be made.
Richard Curran
When it comes to future plans, the future of the food industry in Ireland, the future of farming, the whole question of environment, climate emissions, the size of the national herd. Does that all impinge in a way on your own future plans for Tirlán.
Jim Bergin
It does indeed. It's a there are very significant, I would say, challenges within that. But again, we have to start off with the basics. So, you know, the first aspect here is that people have to eat. It's the most fundamental on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know, people need food and that's forgotten a little bit in the equation today. The second element never to forget is that Ireland is one of the best dairy countries in the world and that farmers in Ireland can compete economically, you know, on cost and quality with anybody. And that's a great place to be. Now, the challenge we have then is, is the whole challenge with the bovine and methane. We have challenges with water quality and biodiversity. But, my belief is that once the policymakers balance the opportunities and create the frameworks for the opportunities with perhaps the more restrictive policies that are already in place, well then I think farmers will see what the future will look like. And my belief is that that, you know, and we've seen it in other countries, farmers have a massive role to play, because they are the owners and miners of the land. So they have a massive role to play in the sustainability equation going forward.
Richard Curran
Can we continue to increase output and export more while at the same time reducing emissions? Is it possible?
Jim Bergin
I think that the key element of that is, you know, about the size of the herd. So, you know, we have two herds, let's say, and we have the relative returns of each, you know, so in general, dairying gives a very, very solid return and some years very high on the on the beef side. The returns without the direct payments from the EU would be, you know, somewhat something above zero. So there's a balance within that. The beef heritage declining by about 3% per annum. There are suggestions, for example, that we'll have a retirement scheme within dairy. My personal belief is that that's only procrastinating in relation to beef and that there will be a retirement scheme within beef at a point in time. But the retirement scheme, for farmers, must be implemented or made available in the context of what that land can be used for. And I know Minister Ryan is about halfway through the land use policy. But that's a massive element of this because, you know, we have an electrification strategy at the moment, you know, and solar, they have changed the regulations around solar in the last few months. And that has had a massive impact on the demand for solar. We sell a solar package and the demand this year has ballooned towards last year, for example. But then we have to have a biofuel strategy and the basic inputs for biofuels in anaerobic digestion, for example, is waste food, slurry and grass. And two of those have to come from farms. So I'm very disappointed and I've said this a number of times recently that we have been very strong on the restrictive policies, and we have been very slow on the opportunity policies. And, you know, in classic change management, what you do is you develop the opportunity side in the future. So with any group, you show them the future first and then you ask them to move from where they are. In this situation, we have vilified farmers for where they are and we haven't shown them enough of the future yet. And therefore there's fear among our farmers.
Richard Curran
Well I suppose there's two sides to the argument. One is if I was a dairy farmer and I'd say, "right, the quotas are coming to an end in 2015, I'm going to ramp up my production. That's in line with government policy about the future food production and the size of the industry and the size of the dairy herd and the size of everything. So I'm totally consistent with all of that. I'm on message with what the government wants to achieve". The emissions go too high and then it's, "no, we have too many cows. You're going to have to get rid of some". So I can empathize fully with farmers on that. But then the other side of the argument is we ramped it up. It's a subsidized industry and now it's going to be they're going to be subsidized to ramp it back down again.
Jim Bergin
I think that farming is subsidized in Europe one way or other. It's very important that farmers are kept on the land and it's very important that the land is maintained. And I do believe that and we have seen it. For example, we've seen a herd cull in the Netherlands. They culled 150,000 cows in February and March of this year. They had the highest milk supplies they ever had. So our farmers can stabilize. There will be a reduction in the herd because it's even happening through natural causes and natural trend. But productivity on farms will improve and continue because they will use technology to do that.
Richard Curran
And coming back to the implications for Tirlán into the future, how do you factor all of this into your expansion plans?
Jim Bergin
Yeah.
Richard Curran
So where will the growth come from? Where do you see the business in five or 7 or 10 years from now?
Jim Bergin
Sure. I think that that first of all, if you get back to the most fundamental of our roles, it is to enable our farmers to transition through different phases of evolution. And we've done that brilliantly, actually since the 70s, and farmers have done it brilliantly and have adapted. So again, our role now is to enable our farmers to adapt to a more sustainable farming model. Our belief is that there will be a more diversified model at farm level. And you know, our solar panel offering, if you like, is a classic of that. So we will do more where it makes sense. We will do more in relation to biofuels and other land uses. So we will adapt to that. And for us, then the other half of the mix here is that we have increased our output by 83% between 2014 and 2022. And now we can draw a breath and say that, you know, the increase is maybe something like 1% per annum coming from productivity. So it gives us a lot more head space, but also money to invest in value add. So we have 3.2 billion litres, which has grown significantly. That's big enough for us to mine the value of milk and dairy and technology in relation to dairy and nutrition is all evolving. And, you know, I believe we can play a very significant role in that higher value end of the market.
Richard Curran
When you look at some of the bigger geopolitical uncertainty out there, I'm thinking about things like the US and China and Europe and China. I don't think you guys are necessarily selling massively directly into the Chinese market, but Asia would be a big market for you.
Jim Bergin
Yeah. No, well, we are selling UHT creams directly into China and we do sell some powders for the infant formula industry and there as well.
Richard Curran
Are you worried about where all that's going?
Jim Bergin
Yeah, there's you know, if I stop to think about the general industry, one of the things, you know, people would have asked the question over the years, you know, should the industry have consolidated more? And there's no question. But we have that comparative advantage that enables us all to live and compete pretty well. What concerns me a little bit and I've had this debate with my own team is how defendable and protectable are the markets that we have. So, you know, you go back to the Jack Welch theory of things, you know, be number 1 or 2 in the market. And there's good reason for that. And I think that is more important now. So I think the fragmented nature of our industry in Ireland could expose us a bit more to the geopolitical issues. You know, if you have a brand like Kerrygold, which we have, or you have a brand like Avonmore, which Tirlán has in Ireland, you know, you can defend that pretty well because the consumer wants it and you can get over many things then from a policy point of view or whatever. But if we're selling, you know, commodities, even though they are high value commodities and they're not branded and don't have the consumer loyalty to them, it's harder to defend. So, you know, I often wonder then would an organisation like Arla, who has 85% of the milk of Denmark and two other big countries as well, are they able to go into markets, play in the top one, 2 or 3 positions in those markets and defend a lot stronger than we might be able to do?
Richard Curran
How big are the dairy farms in China, Jim?
Jim Bergin
They're big. So the top 25 dairy farms in China have 1.7 million cows, which is 200,000 cows more than we have in Ireland. So that's the potential scale. But they're industrial scale. And the Chinese are driving very hard. They increase their milk output by 8% last year. So they're big. They're big, yeah.
Richard Curran
Are you optimistic about the future of food and food production in Ireland and the future of farming?
Jim Bergin
I am, first of all, because I'm a natural optimist, but I have great belief in individual families sitting down quietly, hearing the news, reading the Farmers Journal or reading the other agri papers, thinking themselves and thinking it out. They discuss and they think and then they adapt in a very, very pragmatic manner to what is happening. And also today they have access to significant advice. So those discussion groups, you know, which are led by Teagasc and facilitated by Teagasc, our own advisors. So I believe that farmers will adapt. I believe that farming in Ireland is a very natural thing to be doing with comparative advantage. So on the basis of those general positions, I think we will have a very, very good future here and people have to eat.
Richard Curran
And as a business steeped in in dairy and dairy spinoffs and ingredients and cheese and everything, are you open to things like what do you think is the future of plant based foods?
Jim Bergin
We are, yeah. So we're the largest purchasers of grain in Ireland. We buy 288,000 tonnes and we have developed a full range of oat-based products now. So last week we launched our oat drinks, both a natural and a barista version of that. We can provide products to make chocolate, to make yogurts, to make various types of pace. We can provide oat powders for people to use in bakery to bake bread with in particular and also powders for drinks. So we have a full range. It's very small relative to the 2 billion ingredients business that we have. But yes, it's an ever present now it will grow and however there is a challenge I think, for that market. And that is that, you know, milk has been around for thousands of years. There's about 200 properties identified in milk. And for even for, you know, precision fermentation and alternate products to replicate all of the factors that exist within milk will be very difficult. And so there's a lot of work for people then to achieve a balanced diet with the known factors apart from the unknowns. So we're rolling back a lot of history to try and replace milk. But yes, Plant has a role. Without a doubt. It has a role and it will grow. It's growing at about 8% per annum.
Richard Curran
Well, Jim, there are there are a few questions that I ask all our guests on this podcast, a sort of a quickfire round, and I'll throw them at you. The first one, What CEO or entrepreneur do you most admire and why?
Jim Bergin
John Hume you know, would have been a person because I just thought he had such integrity and he was a very humble man, so I liked him. But, you know, the simplest answer is this is I was out last night playing nine holes of golf with two men, Pat O'Neill and Billy Murphy, who are former chiefs of AWG. It's a long time since both made their communion and they were like two chaps last night playing golf. And Pat sank about three putts longer than ten feet. And you know the thrill it was and how they celebrate life and how they are so enthusiastic about what's happening now. And when you think back about what they achieved, you know, back in the day in going on the stock exchange in 1988, I admired them. I admired John Moloney for his authenticity. John always turned up into difficult situations and led the attack. So there are people I've been close to and, you know, I have. To say I do admire them.
Richard Curran
What book or film is your favourite?
Jim Bergin
Yeah, there's a there's a book, Leadership Wisdom by Robin Sharma. And that had a deep impact on my behaviour as a manager, you know. And the biggest part of that was to, to every day to seek the opportunity to praise people. And it just changed from being the kind of pernickety accountant which I was at a point to just celebrate the good things that people are doing on a day to day basis. And I talk to people as much as I possibly can. I particularly I talk to the people who clean the offices and the people who prepare our food. And, you know, I hold them up there as people with important roles. So to talk to people and praise them every day. And I learned that one thing from that book, which was really important.
Richard Curran
It sounds as if you do, but do you have a particular mantra in business? And what is it?
Jim Bergin
I suppose I have a couple of them. The main one is they used to be a great phrase in Dublin, you know, Are you for real? And that, you know, is very important to me. So, you know, you have to think through and think behind what people are saying and see are they're really solid on this. And is it real? So that is a kind of a fundamental instinct. But the one that I would communicate most is that good delivery does not trump bad behaviour. So if there's poor behaviour by individuals who could be high fliers in an organization, they need to be coached, they need to be asked to develop or they need to go because bad behaviour is corrosive in an organization and corrosive in your culture, which is more important.
Richard Curran
When you're finished this job at some point in the future. What would you like people to say about what you achieved and how you did it?
Jim Bergin
I think the most important thing that people will say that I would like people to say and maybe they won't, is that I was authentic. I think that that's incredibly important to me. I haven't been ever too concerned about my own brand, you know, And I've kind of lived among the people, really. And my team today would be more important for to articulate their achievements rather than my own. So I think that would be important. But then, you know, we've come through phases of incredible growth. We have built a lot of things, but it's my people have done that. So I think, you know, when people look back, they'll say that we delivered on the growth and we kept the organization together and we've ended up in a better place. But it's mainly about the people that I've led, you know, and that they are great people.
Richard Curran
And what advice would you give to a leader, a manager, an entrepreneur starting out?
Jim Bergin
Well, I think that the leaders shouldn't really if he can avoid it or she use the letter I that's the first thing. My antenna goes up when I hear people talking about I decided this or I shape that. It's generally not the case. It's the team. I think most important for a leader is that the cup is always half full. Always. There's always hope. And then the other piece of advice to leaders, which, you know, not everybody is confident, you know, in their own skin and that they're doing the right things. And there's just one line to remember: I am enough.
Richard Curran
Well, it's a fascinating time, Jim, in your industry, lots of challenges and lots of opportunities there, and particularly for Tirlán, something that has been around but is also brand new as well. And you're bringing obviously a lot of energy and experience in shaping the future direction of the business for your members. Thank you very much for joining us today. Jim Bergin. We hope you're enjoying this EY podcast CEO Outlook series. Remember, you can catch previous interviews we've done with CEOs like David McRedmond of An Post, Tony Smurfit of Smurfit Kappa Group, Imelda Hurley of Coillte, and Steve Cutler of Icon. Until the next time, thanks for listening. Bye bye.
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