Enterprise Ireland
Annual Report and Accounts 2005
Annual Report and Accounts 2005
PowerBar, a company in operation for only two years, recorded turnover of €8 million in 2005 and faces rapid export growth. This highly innovative engineering company is one of two businesses founded by serial entrepreneur Philip O’Doherty. Both PowerBar and PowerBoard are located in Burnfoot, Co. Donegal.
PowerBar manufactures a range of busbar products, electrical conductors that provide an alternative to the use of electrical cabling for the transmission of electric current within commercial and high-rise residential properties. Its busbar trunking systems can manage the power supply in utility buildings and work particularly well in tower block constructions. The unique proprietary coating on the products provides superior barrier performance at a reduced cost, making the products highly competitive. The products also complement those manufactured by PowerBar’s sister company E&I Engineering.
The company has landed two major contracts with Heathrow Terminal Five and is in the process of appointing distributors in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Its main market has been the United Kingdom but the company is increasingly looking to the Middle East and continental Europe for expansion.
PowerBar has 50 employees, including a 14 person R&D team. The group of companies including PowerBoard and E&I Engineering together employ 170 people in Donegal, strongly supporting the local economy. The companies highlight the success that can be achieved by innovative, export-focused companies located in more rural regions such as Donegal. Many of the employees originally worked in the area’s textile industry, which has seen job losses in recent years. PowerBar re-trained these people for its engineering business.
Philip O’Doherty, founder and managing director of PowerBar, believes that although Donegal is quite a distance from Dublin and Belfast, it offers great advantages to his business. He says:
“The quality of the workforce in Donegal is very high and it’s been a great advantage to us. Something I’m particularly proud of is that we’re attracting a lot of excellent young graduates who have studied in Dublin and want to return to Donegal to live.”
Enterprise Ireland strongly supports PowerBar in its new product development and this assistance helps encourage crucial R&D activity and efficiency improvements to factory operations. Enterprise Ireland is also working intensively with the company to source buyers and distributors in new export markets. Strong growth is forecast for PowerBar and its sister companies in the coming years.
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