From Bandon to China, Fleming went global

EXPOSURE? It is a long way from the exposed West Cork coastline and the scenic Seven Heads to money-mill windfarms in the mid-west of the United States of America, but that’s just one of the journeys taken by John Fleming.

Founder and backbone of the Fleming Group, with a turnover at peak of as much a as €300 million a year, John Fleming has been the quiet man of the Irish building and development boom, since his start back in 1975 building agricultural sheds. He now has business dealings across Europe, the US, Dubai and China.

Fleming himself is teetotal, and his business has kept a similar sobriety: despite a far-flung geographic business base, there was never a Fleming Group helicopter or jet. He took a train to yesterday’s court appearance with ACC, where he was successful in having an examiner appointed in lieu of a receiver to one of his companies, Tivway.