MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
CLARE HUGHES, 47, founded CF Pharma in 2012 with Caroline Fogarty, creating hypoclorousbased sanitiser CleanRite. She lives in Kilkenny with her four children.
I always had a natural affinity for technology and I was always quite good at science. And I have always been quite entrepreneurial. I won a prize at the Young Scientists Competition when I was 15, making alcohol from potatoes to use as a cleaning agent.
I went on to study pharmacy at university but while working in retail I realised it didn’t do anything for me and I wanted to start my own business. So I worked as a locum to raise the money to set up my own business which was Nutri Science which I set up in 2000. We had a factory and employed 35 people for ten years. We had an opportunity in 2010 to sell the business which we did.
But I liked creating things so in 2014 I started CF Pharma in Ireland and it has been very positive since. It is a medical device company in Kilkenny. We employ 50 people and we have almost doubled turnover every year. We have been lucky to get really talented people to come to Kilkenny to live and work with us.
We started on the CleanRite product four years ago. It’s hypoclorous so it’s basically magic water and we started registering it for hospitals for years ago. We have it registered for wound therapy in the States. The beauty of it is it s PH neutral and it sanitisises everything, killing bacteria, viruses and fungi but it is as safe as water.
You can use it on your skin and on your surroundings and it will sanitise them, you can ingest it or spray it into your eyes and it won’t harm you. So instead of the alcohol sanitiser that causes dermatitis, this actually helps with it. We have been selling it in Europe, the US and the Middle East for years and when Covid-19 hit we had actually done some testing which showed it killed coronavirus as well. So we were in the perfect place to launch the product into the Irish market.
As a parent myself, I am delighted to offer CleanRite as a more appropriate alternative to alcoholbased sanitisers for children.
So my light bulb moment was a collection of years of work with good science and an ability to be dynamic and adapt to the situation.
CleanRite is available in all leading pharmacies, ranging from €4.99; see cfpharma.ie