Glenisk chief vows to rebuild business destroyed by fire
Glenisk managing director Vincent Cleary said the cause of the fire was unknown but a forensic team was expected to arrive on Wednesday to begin an investigation. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire
The family who founded the organic milk and yogurt producer devastated by fire have vowed to rebuild their business.
Vincent Cleary, managing director of Glenisk in Co Offaly, said he has been heartened by the flood of supportive messages he has received.
As he stood outside the shell of the dairy near the village of Killeigh, he was given a hand-delivered letter from one customer and neighbour.
He said the letter from the woman nearly brought him to tears. She had written: “So sorry to hear about the loss of your lovely premises. As the saying goes, God never closes one door but he opens another.
“Keep positive, life balances out troubles with blessings so there is something beautiful coming your way to make up for this trouble. Wishing you luck in the next few months in finding a positive way forward.”
Suppliers too have offered their support and wished the Clearys well in their quest to recover from Monday's blaze, which is estimated to have cost about €20m.
“Farmers were ringing [each other] and they were on edge. They did not know what was going to happen,” said Darren Grennan, an organic dairy farmer in Clara, Co Offaly.
“But we were told they're going ahead and collecting the milk as normal and the price difference between conventional and organic will be made up by them out of their own pocket to keep the farmers going until they get up and running themselves again,” he added.
“I hope they can get up and running in the next few weeks because it would be great if they could. They have a great market there and I've been looking at thousands of comments about them, saying how great they are and that they have fabulous yogurts.”
Mr Grennan, along with his father Gerard and wife Aine, has been supplying Glenisk for nearly 10 years and has built up a herd from 55-head to 150.
He supplies Glenisk with about 800,000 litres of organic milk each year and is delighted the Clearys have managed to come up with alternative arrangements at such short notice.
Insurance assessors were on site at Newtown, Killeigh, about six miles from Tullamore on Tuesday and Mr Cleary said he was satisfied the company has adequate cover.
“Apart from us being gutted, the building is gutted,” he said.
While he came to terms with the loss of a thriving multi-million euro business, Mr Cleary was still relieved that all 50 staff present when the fire alarm went off were evacuated safely without injury.
“I get emotional at times but I also get elated that nobody was hurt,” he said.
Mr Cleary said the cause of the fire was unknown but a forensic team was expected to arrive on Wednesday to begin an investigation.
He is hoping goat's milk packing could resume first. In the meantime, organic dairy milk was still being collected from farmers for transfer to other dairies.
“We've no electricity or running water on site. Everything has been basically burnt to a cinder or powered off so we need to get the services back operational,” he said.
“We'll look and see if there are solutions where we can start trying to source equipment and try and start making yogurt again. We've got a journey ahead of us.
“We've faced adversary before and we'll get over this as well.” he said.
Standing looking at the still smouldering building, Mr Cleary said: “She's the old lady, she's our lady and she can be replaced.”
Glenisk was founded by the late Jack Cleary in 1987 and was transformed into one of the country's leading organic businesses over the past two decades.
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