Established in 1998 as the Irish government’s business development agency, it has helped thousands of Irish companies across industries—including the supplement sector—year after year scale their businesses across international markets to create long-term growth at home.
Enterprise Ireland currently supports between 50 to 60 Irish supplement companies, ranging from large-scale operations like taste and nutrition firm Kerry Group and global nutrition company Glanbia to small-to-medium-sized enterprises like AnaBio, a microencapsulation company specializing in advanced ingredient protection and delivery solutions.
Sinéad Bleiel, PhD, founder at AnaBio, sought out Enterprise Ireland’s services when she first considered starting her business in 2011.
“The great thing about Enterprise Ireland was they really bought into my vision and were hugely supportive in a very practical manner,” she said. “They understood where I was coming from, the challenges I would face in the initial stages of the business, and they brought a wealth of experience as to how to address the challenges faced in setting up and growing the business.”
Her agreement with Enterprise Ireland was simple, Dr. Bleiel said.
“Their key focus was to support and drive the growth of the business and thereby deliver jobs, exports and long-term return on investment,” she explained. “They were completely aligned with my own goals for AnaBio.”
Since launch, the agency has helped AnaBio grow while navigating significant shifts in the business environment, including the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving global trade and tariff conditions. It has also assisted in identifying external resources required to support AnaBio’s research, introducing potential research collaborators inside and outside Ireland and managing the complex challenges associated with protecting the intellectual property that arise from such collaborations.
Enterprise Ireland introduced the microencapsulation company to new clients and markets, continuing to propel management and production capacity as demand for the company’s encapsulated probiotics, vitamins and minerals continues to grow.
“While the initial financial investment was critical to establishing the business, the ongoing support right across a broad range of business areas has been key to enabling us to rapidly scale the business,” Dr. Bleiel said.
A culture of investment
Enterprise Ireland was created from several organizations with connections to Irish trade and industry, including Forbairt—responsible for providing development grants—and An Bord Tráchtála—an organization born in 1991 from the merger of the Irish Goods Council and Córas Tráchtala, a statutory body that marketed Irish goods abroad.
As one of the most active venture capital investors in Europe, Enterprise Ireland has over 40 international offices, and its staff manages a budget of nearly €600 million (US$703 million) per annum on behalf of the government of Ireland.
“1998 was a time of really high investment within Ireland from an educational point of view with healthy fiscal policies within the country,” said David O’Flaherty, senior vice president of food & beverage FDI for North America at Enterprise Ireland. “We had just joined European Union membership as well, so it really was a thriving economy. A lot of U.S. tech companies set up within Ireland to access the EU.”
The government of Ireland established Enterprise Ireland and its sister agency, IDA (Industrial Development Authority, or Ghníomhaireacht Forbartha Tionscail in Irish), as initiatives to expand the Irish economy. IDA was established in 1949 to draw and retain foreign direct investment into the country. One of IDA’s most notable achievements was attracting global tech giant Google in 2003, an investment appeal attributed to the country’s low corporate tax rate of 12.5%. IDA works in tandem on trade missions and national strategy with Enterprise Ireland.
“From a foreign direct investment point of view, that is why you saw a lot of U.S. investment coming into Ireland, particularly within the tech scene,” O’Flaherty said.
Within its sphere of indigenous business, Enterprise Ireland is providing support for industries like digital technologies, industrial services (high-tech construction), engineering, mechanical manufacturing, life sciences, medical technologies, and food and sustainability. In addition to Glanbia and Kerry Group, some of its better-known beneficiaries include Ryanair and packaging giant Ardagh Group.
Earlier this year, the agency conducted its annual business review of its client companies’ total exports. In 2014, its Ireland base of exports was valued at €15.4 billion (US$18 billion). By 2024, that number had doubled, according to O’Flaherty. The economic expansion has also led to the creation of 15,000 jobs in Ireland since inception and supports the development of thousands of jobs abroad.
“Given that Ireland’s population is five million, I think that’s quite significant as well,” O’Flaherty said. “We’ve had some of the lowest employment rates within Ireland that we have ever had essentially…. And I think what’s more important about that is 70% of the companies that we support are in rural Ireland.”
As for AnaBio, O’Flaherty said the agency wants to double the company’s headcount. It can cover 20% of the salaries for those employees for two years.
Moving into the US market
Enterprise Ireland’s objective is to assist companies to enter the United States, tapping into the largest supplement market with access to support, trade missions and direct funding, as well as helping companies navigate regulatory challenges. The U.S. market is a key growth territory for these companies, especially in tech and life sciences.
The Eurozone remains the top target region for companies in the Enterprise Ireland portfolio, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States. Ireland is the world’s No. 1 investor in the United States on a per capita basis, according to the agency, which has assisted over 900 Irish companies prepare to enter the U.S. market, supported by seven U.S. offices including one recently opened in Atlanta.
“We’ve built up quite an incredibly strong network specifically within the U.S.,” O’Flaherty said. “We provide very targeted introductions to the likes of international buyers, service providers, local authorities, providing executive network access and then we also run market events.”
In March, Enterprise Ireland hosted a St. Patrick’s Day program of business events across the United States and said it was “doubling down” on Ireland’s commitment to drive investment and economic value for the benefit of both the United States and Ireland.
According to information from the agency, it helps employ 115,000 people across the United States but notes that it approaches each state as its own country to maximize expansion opportunities, O’Flaherty said.
Glanbia, for one, generates US$3.8 billion (€3.4 billion) in revenue from its U.S. operations and has over 20 U.S. production facilities and several innovation centers across the United States, with facilities in Illinois, Idaho, Michigan and California, where it employs 4,000 people.
The Kerry Group’s investment in the United States includes a 360,000-square-foot state-of-the-art production facility in Rome, Georgia. The company partners with major U.S. raw materials, operating in 70 sites (48 manufacturing) across states like Georgia, Texas and Missouri, employing approximately 6,000 and spending $1.5 billion (€1.3billion) each year on U.S. raw materials.
U.S. investment by the Kerry Group
Acquisitions: $735 million for three U.S. food companies in 2020 and Natreon, a U.S. botanical supplier, in 2022.
Georgia: A massive upgrade and expansion in Rome, Georgia, totaling $137.4 million, establishing a major manufacturing hub in 2022.
Pennsylvania: A $43 million investment in 2025 to open their first coffee roasting/extraction facility in Bethlehem, creating jobs.
“In terms of our expansion opportunities, what you traditionally see is companies coming to the East Coast first,” O’Flaherty said.“That’s how it’s been for hundreds of years, that’s where Irish people first came. They’ve gone to New York, they’ve gone to Boston, and we don’t really see them going much further than that.”
The aim is to close gaps, investing in states from coast-to-coast. Back in Ireland, Enterprise Ireland sees opportunities in optimizing knowledge flows as people move across industries.
“We’re seeing a transfer certainly of skills, but then a transfer of individuals coming out of that, looking at opportunities from the pharma sphere, and how they can bring that into food and beverage specifically within nutraceuticals and for food,” O’Flaherty said. “It’s an area that I think has grown rapidly within Ireland off the base of the big companies that we have there.”