Devenish signs £25m tech agreement in Jamaica
Richard Kennedy believes sustainability holds the key to building on Ireland’s strong reputation for food, writes Ailish O’Hora
AGRI-technology group Devenish has just signed a £25m (€29m) tech and R&D agreement with the Jamaica-based Caribbean Broilers.
The 10-year contract will mean that Belfast-based Devenish’s science and technology will be used in the production of sustainable chicken suited to a tropical climate and diet.
“We will build a performance house, identify challenges and use our combined knowledge and expertise to agree trial implementation,” said Devenish chief executive Richard Kennedy.
Devenish uses a combination of science, technology and innovation in the development of food production systems, and specialises in the optimisation of nutrient use for the animal feed and food industry.
The company has an annual turnover of £235m, with a staff of 700 spread across the globe.
It boasts an innovation centre in Dowth, Co Meath, and operations in the Middle East and India.
Caribbean Broilers is an agri-business firm operating in three markets: Jamaica, Haiti and the United States.
Addressing the coronavirus pandemic, Kennedy said Ireland had the ability to play a key role in the international food industry once the crisis had passed.
RICHARD Kennedy got the business gene from his late father Paddy but the science one comes from his mother, Teresa (87). Kennedy, the chief executive of Belfast-based agri-technology firm Devenish, grew up in vans, he tells the
Sunday Independent . “My father, who wouldn’t go to school for his parents, started off as a shop boy in Sligo and ended up buying a confectionery business,” he says.
“The vans had ‘Kennedy’s of Aclare’ written on the side of them. They sold sweets, ice-cream and minerals. It was part of our childhood. My father later built up a livestock mart business.
“But my mother was a home economics teacher and she instilled a love of science in me. In our business, science is the vehicle and technology delivers the answers and commercial return.”
Kennedy, who is also a minority shareholder in the company and was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019, studied agriculture at UCD and started his career at animal mineral lick business Uniblock.
He then joined Newtech, where he met Devenish main shareholder and executive chairman Owen Brennan.
Brennan acquired Devenish in the late 1990s and Kennedy joined him as a minority shareholder. At the time, the company had a turnover of £5m (€5.7m). That figure is now £235m, with 700 staff across the globe, from Europe to the Middle East and India.
While it started off as a pre-mix animal feed manufacturer in the 1950s, the Devenish of today is a more sophisticated animal.
It now combines the ingredients of science, technology and innovation in the development of food production systems, and specialises in the optimisation of nutrient use for the animal feed and food industry.
Sustainability is Kennedy’s mantra. It is the key to the future and it’s at the firm’s core, he says, but the industry is not without its challenges.
“Between now and 2050, the world is going to require the equivalent amount of food that was produced in the last 10,000 years because of population growth. At Devenish, we design the feed to fit the animal and the environment. It is farm to fork because when we put a food together for an animal, it is consumed by humans,” he says.
Research and development is also key, and there is a team of 40 PhDs working at Devenish, with over £40m invested annually in that side of the business.
“The technology we develop and deploy ensures the most effective and efficient use of nutrients in the production of meat, milk, eggs and fish. We are nutritionists and we prescribe and design nutrition which positively impacts the animals, the land and the environment,” says Kennedy.
For example, three years ago, the company embarked on a venture with supermarket group Waitrose and chicken producer Moy Park to come up with a better way to deliver the Omega-3 nutrient, given the popularity of poultry.
A clinical trial by the Royal College of Surgeons showed that if consumed regularly, the chicken and eggs had the ability to reduce the risk of a range of ailments, including heart attacks and strokes.
The results of the six-month clinical trial were presented on a world stage at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions Conference in Anaheim, California, in November 2017.
Meanwhile, back in the late 1990s, Devenish devised technology that lowered smells and emissions from pig farms.
Today, one of its main projects is the development of technology that is designed to deliver carbon-neutral beef and dairy by 2025.
Kennedy is quietly confident about the plans. “Work is ongoing at our world innovation centre at Dowth, Co Meath. There is no silver bullet, but we are confident the science will deliver,” he comments.
Funding for the innovation centre came about following an injection of €118m in long-term investment. This was made possible by €40m in funding from the European Investment Bank, with additional backing from Devenish’s finance partners Ulster Bank and Danske Bank.
Delivering the technology to enable carbon-neutral meat and dairy would be very timely given Ireland’s record on carbon emissions and the importance of the industry to our economy.
According to a recent report from the World Health Organisation and The Lancet, Ireland ranked in the bottom 30 countries for tackling carbon emissions, while we performed particularly badly in the ranking on sustainability.
While recognising our record on the environment and emissions, Kennedy added that agriculture and food production is one of the only industries where carbon is needed.
“While it has been castigated for years for producing greenhouse gases, it also has the ability to sequester carbon through the soils, grasslands and hedgerows if utilised efficiently,” he says.
“With the introduction of the European Green Deal, which is replacing CAP, farmers and food producers are going to play a key role.
“The sustainability challenge is great, but the opportunity is incredible. And we must not shirk our responsibility to climate, environment and quality healthy food.”
Kennedy believes that science and research have the answers to these challenges, and says that Devenish has the appetite to find them, then apply them commercially.
He says: “I have said in the past there is no silver bullet, but there is one key ingredient - and that is collaboration.
“Collaboration for us is a vital part of the future opportunity there is for Ireland, as a food-producing nation; food that’s good for the environment, good for the farmer and good for the food industry, good for the consumer and good for the country. As we term it, ‘one health, from soil to society’.”
Earlier this week, an informal alliance was launched in the European parliament following calls from a number of EU environment ministers for a green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Ministers have also launched an appeal for the European Green Deal to be placed at the heart of the EU’s post-Covid-19 recovery plan.
And in what is seen as a boost to Europe’s Green Deal strategy, 180 signatories, including executives from multinationals such as PepsiCo and Microsoft, as well as major green groups, have joined the ministers.
They have committed to working together and sharing knowledge and expertise to develop a green investment environment designed to drive the EU’s economic recovery.
Kennedy says that while the coronavirus pandemic is tragic and is spreading death, fear and economic pain across Ireland and the wider globe, this country can step up and play a leading role in the future of food delivery after the crisis eventually passes.
He says: “Ireland has an extremely strong and well-regarded position globally in terms of production and provision of quality food. This has been a hard-fought and well-deserved reputation. And something that we have seen, and found incredibly valuable as we have travelled throughout the world building our business.
“But it is a reputation now that we must fight to hold on to. In order to do that, we must step into the challenge of delivering sustainable, authentic and transparent food production as I’ve said previously, and shortcuts will not be tolerated.
“To build on something and make it better, we must innovate and adapt to new demands that require change.
“We should embrace that change and challenge ourselves every day to be better — to lead the world in delivering food that is of the highest standard.”
He adds that Dr Artur Runge-Metzger (director of DG climate action for the EU) spoke recently at the Institute of International and European Affairs reception in Dublin of the new Green Deal from Europe and the opportunity for Irish farmers.
Kennedy says that Ireland can also benefit from the changes in the world’s approach to food that are likely to follow on from coronavirus.
“Transparency and authenticity in the food value will become invaluable and Ireland is already leading the way in this. Shortcuts will not be tolerated in the future.
“And we have always shown in Ireland, and the Covid-19 crisis today illustrates this again, that together we are always better when we make decisive, proactive decisions for the betterment of all — it delivers for Ireland Inc, delivers for all of us.”
According to Kennedy, Ireland’s ability to produce food is unrivalled. We may be in difficult times, but he is optimistic about the country’s opportunities for the future.
“There is no place like Ireland to produce food. There is no place like Ireland to produce carbon-neutral, even to the point of being able to look at carbon-negative food.
“It is important to recognise we have the perfect climate, the perfect environment, the perfect farmers, the perfect soils to deliver those opportunities and we have been doing it for thousands of years.
“But it can’t be done in isolation; it can’t be done by one part of the supply chain winning, and every other part of the supply chain losing. Because then that’s divisive.
“It must be and has to be win-win. Together is always better.”