Biscuit king Michael Carey is hopeful that his new venture can take a sizeable bite out of the lucrative biscuit markets in both Ireland and the UK, currently worth around €170m and €2bn respectively.

One hundred new jobs have been announced for Drogheda.

Some of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs will address students and the wider community at Innov8 Week at UCC.

An American air force general was sacked from his post for “inappropriate behaviour” while in Russia, it has emerged.

Simon Coveney, the agriculture minister, has described Bord Bia’s new national Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme as vital for the promotion of Irish dairy produce in export markets.

Jack O'Connor is returning to inter-county management as the new Kerry minor football manager, it has been confirmed.

Jack O’Connor’s ratification as manager of the Kerry minor football team for the next two years met with an unprecedented challenge from the floor last night when Kenmare delegate Michael Carey and his Kilgarvan counterpart Tom Randles objected to the recommendation of the executive and maintained the outgoing manager, Mickey ‘Ned’ O’Sullivan, should be re-appointed.

Despite having to miss a number of recent races due to illness, Sean Tobin showed he is getting back into top form with an easy victory at the Aviva/Munster Schools Cross-Country at the WIT complex on the outskirts of Waterford city yesterday.

Sales into France of Irish beef, lamb, and other agri-food products are playing an important part in Ireland’s economic recovery, according to Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Fourteen Irish meat companies and one Irish dairy co-operative are among the 5,900 exhibitors from 100 countries in Paris this morning for the French food fair Sial.

THE American grey squirrel, and its flea, arrived here from England in 1911 when a ‘scurry’ was presented to the bride during wedding celebrations at Castleforbes County Longford.

Sustainable, low-carbon food production is vital for Ireland’s clean image and also cuts business costs, according to 120 food and drink industry chief executives gathered in the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business yesterday to launch a Bord Bia-led programme.

The public is being asked to keep their eyes open for grey squirrels as part of a national survey to detect whether the pest’s numbers are continuing to increase — at the expense of the native red squirrel.

Ambitions for food export growth are being given a lift with this week’s Bord Bia Food Works open evenings.

The Siege of Ennis is set to replace the polka as a band from Co Cork prepares to encourage Russians to wet the shamrock.

Creative food entrepreneurs can avail of expert industry advice and a €5,000 feasibility grant by applying for the new Food Works initiative launched yesterday by Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and Teagasc.

Millions of euro in new trade will result from speed-dating style meetings between Irish food and drink firms and global buyers at Bord Bia’s Marketplace 2012 yesterday in the National Convention Centre, Dublin.

FIONNUALA BRITTON beat a quality field to notch up another victory in Saturday’s IAAF Grand Challenge Cross Country International over a rain-sodden course in Greenmount, Antrim.

FIONNUALA BRITTON beat a quality field to notch up another victory in Saturday’s IAAF Grand Challenge Cross Country International over a rain sodden course in Greenmount, Antrim.

FOUR out of five retail and food executives are optimistic about the coming year, according to a survey at the 2012 Checkout Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel, Dublin.

SMALL food producers are being prevented from expanding by a crosswind of the global downturn, commodity-cost volatility and lower consumer demand, according to an expert Rabobank analyst.

NEWLY-APPOINTED Bord Bia chairman Michael Carey has hit the ground running by instantly directing Irish beef exports into welcoming, lucrative markets.

BORD BIA has launched a promotional campaign to more than treble its beef exports into Germany by 2015, a drive to capitalise on a doubling of sales there last year.

FOOD and drink exports to Germany rose by 37.5% year on year in the first five months of this year, according to Bord Bia.

VALEO Foods — the joint-venture of Batchelors and Origin Enterprises’ branded food division — has acquired iconic Irish consumer food group, Jacob Fruitfield for an undisclosed sum.

TWO-YEAR-OLD Liam Heffernan, who underwent pioneering brain surgery to help him overcome the fatal Batten disease, arrived back in Ireland yesterday — a week earlier than expected.

OPTIMISM was the order of the day for the 24-hour Sleepless in Garryvoe Entrepreneur Experience workshop in Cork over the weekend.

START-UP businesses have until January 26, to apply for entry to Endeavour, the funding programme run by entrepreneur Jerry Kennelly, Kernel Capital and Kerry Group.

AN historic symbol of hope and vitality reopened among the rubble of Haiti’s capital yesterday as figures showed the struggling country’s citizens were starting to leave emergency camps.

A BUSINESS Boot Camp will see 600 students from Kerry and Limerick put their ideas to the test in front of a panel of leading Irish entrepreneurs and business people, as part of the annual Young Entrepreneur Programme and Awards.

AS many as 100,000 people are thought to have died in the devastating earthquake which shook the capital of Haiti.

WORKERS at a Dublin biscuit factory were hit with the bad news yesterday of 220 job losses.

RARELY has bird life in Ireland been receiving such publicity. Eagles, kites and hen harriers are all making headlines and attention could now be turning to the plight of songbirds which are facing a relatively new threat.

THE native red squirrel, once a common animal in many parts of the country, is under threat from the American grey squirrel which came here about 100 years ago.

New York city anxiously awaited a decision by a jury over whether or not to charge five police officers who unleashed the 50-shot barrage that killed an unarmed man on his wedding day.

JACOB Fruitfield chief executive Michael Carey is to speak at the Christmas lunch of the Mid-West branch of the Marketing Institute on Friday. The lunch will take place at the Castletroy Park Hotel, Limerick.

STATE intervention is hindering rather than helping the cause of the Irish grocery sector, according to Michael Carey, chief executive and majority shareholder of Jacob Fruitfield Food Group.

The number of people claiming unemployment benefit rose slightly in February, according to the Central Statistics Office.

The Jacob Fruitfield Food Group has bought the Real Irish Food Company today.

Ernst & Young has announced the Irish shortlist for the 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year Programme.