Eye on Export David Milligan - Ardglass Sea Products Ltd
From its base on the east coast of Co Down, Ardglass Sea Products Ltd exports fresh and frozen fish products all over the world as well as supplying local restaurants, businesses and wholesalers across NI through its successful retail division. A family run business, the company was established by brothers Seamus and Philip Milligan and is now run by Seamus’ son, David Milligan.
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t seems obvious, but in order to be a successful exporter, you must have a deep understanding of the markets you are operating in, or plan to operate in. Cultural and societal factors are important, as are logistics issues such as currency, payment and import structures. By understanding the nuances of each market, you can build a tailored and effective operating model. Ardglass Sea Products starting exporting almost 30 years ago. While my father and uncle may not have envisaged us exporting to locations as far afield as Cameroon, they recognised the opportunity to penetrate emerging markets brought about by increased globalisation. As a result, we now have a wide client base across the EU, Africa and Asia as well as experience in the Russian market. At Ardglass, we sell pelagic fish. Often referred to as the ‘chicken of the sea’; it’s known for its high protein value, and low cost. We can bring our catch in from the Irish Sea to our well-equipped factory, and within hours the produce can be exported
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to our customers. It’s a product that is in high demand by consumers, but 2016 has been a tricky year for the fishing industry as a whole, with the sector suffering from poor sales in Europe and a lack of exportable currency in Africa (USD). These market and sectoral fluctuations make product quality and customer experience all the more important. We maintain a close understanding of our customers’ ever changing needs. This helps us implement changes which benefit our clients and our business, and allows us to add value to our products through good communication and excellent service. We pride ourselves on these relationships and building trust and reputation with your clients can be just as important as knowing your export market. This is why, despite increased competition we have been doing business with some of our customers for nearly 20 years. Geographically speaking, Northern Ireland is an excellent base for exporters. We benefit from good shipping links from Dublin - a particularly crucial factor for our
business - and as a region we are focused on growing our economy. This means that organisations and local authorities, as we found in our dealing with Invest NI and Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, are very supportive in helping you achieve your ambition. Being an exporter also allows you to continue to grow your business. By working across a number of regions you aren’t wholly reliant on one economy or one market, but instead can scope out additional opportunities if a particular marketplace goes into decline or stagnates. Challenges do of course exist. In our business, we have found that some aspects of NI infrastructure have prohibited our growth plans. Recently we experienced difficulty in securing adequate electricity supply to power our facilities and setbacks of this type can adversely affect businesses growth ambitions. We have been committed to modernising our operations over the last number of years, and at the start of 2016 we completed a large expansion project which modernised our freezing and cold storage capabilities. Having completed this part of our growth programme, we are now looking forward to installing new processing equipment which will further improve our efficiency and outputs and allow us to reach new customers. As with other many other businesses operating within the agri-food sector, ‘Brexit’ is a hot topic. For fishing companies it’s of particular relevance given the stringent quotas placed on the industry. This has been restrictive to our growth plans, so we will continue to observe the debate and vote with interest.”