Making growth outside of Ireland matter
Dublin-based software company Emydex has grown rapidly and entered new international markets as far reaching as the Philippines and South Africa in recent years
James Grennan and Redmond Burke founded Emydex in 2004 having spotted a gap in the marketplace for a software platform specifically focused on the meat, fish and food processing industries.
The production management software they designed from the ground up is now running in over 80 processing plants spread across Ireland, the UK, Europe, Southern Africa and Australia.
The system is designed to manage food production processes “from door to door” – from procurement right through to carcass management, sales order picking and dispatch.
Customers operate Emydex’s factory floor software systems for a variety of purposes, including improving efficiency, reporting on food chain traceability, analysing production yields and recording and reporting on quality, compliance and food safety.
“Our software is different from other suppliers as it is both highly configurable and flexible. It is also hardware independent, meaning it runs on any compatible hardware system – customers can choose to either re-use their existing hardware or shop around for the best hardware prices saving significant cost,” says Emydex CEO David McMahon, who joined the company in 2009 when Burke retired.
Among its workforce of 30 people at its Dublin headquarters, Emydex has a dedicated team focused on new product development. A recent innovation has been to make the traceability and production reporting software available as a cloud-based offering in addition to the traditional on-premises version.
Over the past few years, Emydex has grown steadily in terms of turnover, profit and people. Since McMahon came on board turnover has shot up by 600% and there are staff, distributors and agents in the UK, Columbia, Canada, South Africa, Namibia and Australia in addition to its people in Dublin.
The exporting strategy to date has been to grow internationally through a network of overseas distributors who look after the marketing, sales and ongoing support of Emydex systems.
When it comes to winning new contracts in far-flung places, Emydex has an impressive track record. For example, having successfully implemented its systems with leading meat processors in Namibia (MeatCo) and Botswana (BMC), it signed a further six new customers in the southern hemisphere. These are spread over South Africa, Australia and the Philippines.
“In January 2016, we signed contracts with Klein Karoo, the world’s largest ostrich processor, with headquarters in Oudtshoorn, South Africa and in the Philippines work is well underway on an Emydex traceability and production reporting system for Meliomar, a leading tuna processor based in Pasay City,” says McMahon.
“We are about to sign our first major deal in North America after just six months of working with our newly appointed distributor in that market.”
“We are about to sign our first major deal in North America after just six months of working with our newly appointed distributor in that market”