Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
DERRY FIRM TOPS POLLS IN U.S. VOTE
Company supplies election booths
A NORTHERN Ireland firm will play a key role in next week’s US presidential when its voting booths will be used by millions of voters.
Pakflatt, based in Springtown Industrial Estate, Derry, makes the equipment that will be rolled out across the states.
And 20 years after Patrick Mcgonagle started the company, it is now the largest voting booth manufacturing facility in Europe.
He said the firm first broke into the US market in 2008 and they “haven’t looked back”, supplying polling booths in the last three presidential elections.
Mr Mcgonagle added it was the “hard work” and “dedication” of his team that helped it to the success it is enjoying today. He said: “I came up with the idea to make polling stations with modern materials rather than the old wooden designs at the time.”
“The more I looked at it and investigated the market, the more I realised the wooden structure was a pain for returning officers.
“And after talking with councils in the UK we began to fine tune what they really wanted which was a polling station that packed flat because it was easy to store and move around.
“That when we got the big breakthrough when a UK authority placed an order for 100 units and the rest as they say is history.”
The Derry company now has around 475,000 voting compartments in service around the globe, having distribution centres in Europe, Asia and the United States.
Pakflatt has also manufactured and distributed around 25,900 polling booths in 75 40-ft containers, comprising approximately 600 tons of cargo to 1,200 counties across 48 US states.
One design, the Pakflatt Curbside, allows voters to drive by and drop their b al lo t s into a sp e ci al ly designed box, while also enabling the public maintain social distance. Mr
Mcgonagle said: “Normally a cargo leaves here every week on the run up to the election before embarking on a journey from Belfast, Liverpool, Halifax Nova Scotia by boat, then by train to Chicago before being di stributed throughout the continental United States.”
“It’s incredible and we take great pride in what we do here and I give all the credit in the world to my staff because some of them have been with me for nearly 40 years.
“We have a fantastic t eam and we al l pul l together in the good and bad times and we have stumbled upon something unique in our industry.”