Goodman gets back to business as legal battle ends
It follows the settlement of a long-running legal battle with the State over the 1989 cancellation of export credit insurance relating to beef exports to Iraq.
But it also underlines the business turnaround for Mr Goodman, whose former meat processing group, Food Industries, collapsed into examinership in 1990.
With a consortium of Irish investors, he bought the business back from the banks in 1995 and four years later he bought out his other backers and took full ownership of the group again.
It was a dramatic achievement by the Ardee, Co Louth, businessman, who is again among Europe’s biggest beef processors with plants in Ireland and Britain.
Irish Food Processors employs 1,500 people in Ireland, where it has 20% to 25% of the market with six beef plants, two rendering plants and a burger processing plant.
It recorded pre-tax profits of €41.5 million in 2002, a 24% rise, despite a drop in total group turnover from €914m to €874m.
The group operates in Britain as Anglo Beef Processors, which has around 15% of the beef kill, with nine plants. It supplies many of the major retailers.
A subsidiary, Wessex Foods, the leading producer of frozen burgers in Britain, jointly won a contract with the group’s Silvercrest Foods in Ballybay, Co Monaghan, last year, to supply 600 Burger King outlets in Britain.
Larry Goodman was a key figure in the long running Beef Tribunal in the early ’90s.
Tánaiste Mary Harney welcomed the decision on the part of Goodman Holdings to withdraw its legal action for €100m, plus damages and costs, against the State relating to beef supplies to Iraq.
The State has agreed to withdraw a related action which it had initiated against the company for the recovery of some €5m, paid to a bank in 1990 in respect of the shipment of beef to Iraq.
Both sides have agreed to bear their own respective legal costs incurred to date in relation to both sets of proceedings.
