Bord Bía might be a young organisation but Michael Duffy has ensured it has achieved a lot for its years. Belinda Gannaway meets a bit of a workaholic Bord Bía's chief executive Michael Duffy may be a workaholic but he has a weakness. He reads a good handful of weighty newspapers every day of the week, but on a Sunday he may occasionally glance at the sports headlines before turning to the business pages. For the huge rugby and Sunderland FC fan Duffy is, that is forgiveable. For the rest of the time his commitment copybook is pretty well unblotted. The man is at his Dublin office by 7am and spends more than a proper amount of his own time on aeroplanes preparing to fly the flag around the world for Ireland's £8bn food industry. The Bord Bía tie pin and cuff links are not just there for the sake of the interview. "My daughter thinks they're a bit sad," he laughs, oblivious to whether or not she could have a point. "She would definitely say my biggest weakness is that I work too much." Well he does have a family of five ­ none of whom share his passion for Sunderland ­ he could be spending more time with. Colleagues at Bord Bía reinforce the image of Duffy as a seriously conscientious nose to the grindstone soul. He's a perfectionist and expects no less from colleagues. And while he's well liked and widely respected ­ he has a gentle Celtic sense of humour ­ he's more a wine supping comrade than a bellyful of lager down the pub chap. But then he's got a big job to do looking after the export promotion and development, information and quality assurance needs of Ireland's largest indigenous industry, and one that employs 44,000 people. In the five years since joining the fledgling Bord Bía as chief executive, Duffy has certainly achieved a lot. One of his skills is bringing people together for a common goal, say those who know him. Most interestingly as a comparative lesson for the UK, he has brought together and streamlined Ireland's numerous food organisations. It's something a good few industry insiders would like to see happen here. "We've done a number of new and innovative things that would not have happened without Bord Bía," Duffy says. "On the one hand we've pulled things together. We've ended duplication and been able to make things more efficient." For the record, in its five years Bord Bía ­ which Duffy describes as a one stop trade development, promotion and information shop ­ has held the world's first international symposium on speciality food, the Horizons Irish food exhibition, and the World Meat Congress. It also generated considerable piggyback publicity around Tour de France last year. In 1998 food exports broke the I£5bn barrier for the first time, they are now at I£5.2bn. The catchline Ireland the food island' that accompanies all Bord Bía's promotional work has been critical in establishing an association between the country and its burgeoning food industry that will prove even more important with increasing country of origin labelling. Heading a professional public sector organisation ­ 2/3 of its I£20m funding is state money ­ provides Duffy with his biggest challenge. "It's about trying to ensure we have as close a mindset to the clients as we can," he explains. "I know how frustrating it can be. If someone from the private sector under commercial pressures needs something done and good quality and high level assistance, they need to feel they're working with people that understand the environment. The commercial world has to drive us and that's a difficult task because we don't sell." Duffy's own experience in the private sector was with Courtaulds the textiles group. After qualifying as a research physicist at University College Dublin, Duffy did what few of his academic contemporaries did and began a career in research science. He moved to Coventry to work in the company's synthetic fibres laboratory in 1976 and stayed for three years. He returned to Ireland to work in Courtaulds' County Donegal technical plant and became a development manager at the age of 26.But he didn't stay for long, moving to the Irish Development Agency a year year later. Switching from the private to public sector proved a culture shock. "It was a huge shift." he says "I moved from the highly specific and focused private sector where commercial sensitivity and developing new products and getting them to market as quickly as possible is the key goal, to a much broader agenda where measurement was clear enough but the timescales were longer and the agenda much broader." One of Duffy's first jobs at the IDA was in the rescue and restructuring division. This was a time in the early 80s when "things were pretty difficult," he says. A lot of companies were in a lot of trouble and Duffy spent two and a half years looking at cash, balance sheets and profit and loss accounts. "For someone with a technical background that was great. Spending that much time working with companies that were sick was a great learning curve." The IDA also obliged by sending him to the Insead business school outside Paris for a four month business executive course ­ and "the opportunity to educate myself in fine French wines". Latterly Duffy moved into more marketing related areas, in particular "selling Ireland" to potential investors in the electronics sector. "It was a very exciting time and ultimately a very successful time. Ireland is now known as the Celtic Tiger economy." Although the IDA was involved in the discussions surrounding the establishment of Bord Bía, Duffy himself wasn't. He was headhunted for the job from his last position as head of food and agribusiness at the IDA. That was a great feeling, Duffy says. "I'm passionate about the food industry and a great believer in both its current importance and its future, even though the chips you put into computers seem to be more attractive than the chips you eat at the moment. The growth rates in the food industry might not be as significant as some of the growth rates in the newer industries, but there's a huge movement in the sector. It's certainly not stationary." The industry's willingness to embrace the latest technologies and drive standards as well as its enthusiasm for the development of the convenience food market ­ both ingredients and products ­ is crucial to its current position and future potential. Exports of convenience foods grew 9% last year to just under I£1bn. The challenge for Bord Bía is to promote the sector in such a way as to draw on the traditional virtues and strengths associated with the Emerald Isle and combine them with the reality of the modern image and the "technical sophistication of some of the products coming in". But if convenience products are a relentless success story, the same cannot be said for beef exports that continue to be hit by the aftermath of BSE. The impact of BSE, nationalisation of beef markets and reduced consumption have changed the trade flows. Where 60% of Irish beef exports went to the EU prior to 1996, that slipped to 65%, going to non EU markets which are more volatile. This is a huge headache for Duffy, who describes the EU as the "natural marketplace for our beef". He hopes to reverse the situation by the end of the year. But even at the height of the traumas Duffy maintained his characteristic calmness. One newspaper interviewer had Duffy down as the ideal person to announce a nuclear war without generating all out panic. A lot of trade development work is being done between Bord Bía and the industry to try and get beef exports back on a more comfortable footing. Duffy is keen on as much industry involvement as possible, and says there is a culture of public and private partnerships in Ireland. So Duffy's tenure has not been all plain sailing. And the challenges remain the same today as day one. How to roll together representation and promotion of a diverse and varied industry without losing any of the specialisation that existed before? "Bord Bía is a very young organisation. A lot of work to date has been about getting the structures in place, best practice in place, linkages in place and developing the people." But Duffy always has his eye on the next step, too. The answer is simple. "To develop a range of products and services that we can provide in an increasingly changing environment and maintain our relevance. "We can't do all things for everybody so we have to continue to be focused on our markets and our products to make sure we convert as much value as possible out of the money we're given." {{PROFILE }}