'Ireland is fertile ground for Norland'

25 March 2013

Norland says the Republic of Ireland is proving fertile ground for Norland because, despite the current recession, its business in Ireland has grown 40% over the past year

Over the past decade, the republic has successfully attracted a large number of major multinational businesses, mainly due to its favourable corporate tax rates. It has created significant internet-based ICT and electronic games businesses, medical suppliers, pharmaceuticals and financial services sectors.

“It is these companies that we have been targeting,” explained Paul Saville-King, Norland’s international business managing director, “by offering managed services and integrated FM, allowing customers to focus on core activities and establishing and building their businesses.”

He continued: “The market has been receptive to our solutions, which are built on quality, with innovation but without a compromise on service or the need to be cost effective, and has resulted in our business growing by 40 per cent in the last year. Significant new customers have been from manufacturing, technology, banking, software, data centres, commercial offices and professional services.”

Norland’s Irish business has contributed to the group’s impressive overall growth: it has seen sales grow by 25 per cent in the year to last October and by 64 per cent over the last three years. Since its formation in the UK in 1984, Norland has become a £450million turnover company, employing over 3,500 staff, and operating from a strategic network of regional offices throughout the UK, Europe and the USA. Its success has been built on customer service – its retention rate is 94 per cent – and a highly-awarded concentration on training up its own people.

In Ireland, the company operates teams based in Dublin and Cork, with properties under its operational management ranging from single floors in multi-occupied buildings to substantial property estates, headquarters offices and data centres.

Tommy Fitzpatrick, Norland’s general manager for Ireland, said: “The country is an attractive environment in which to run international businesses. We have already proved there is a very real opportunity for a specialist firm to take responsibility for facilities management services off their hands, providing maintenance, improving efficiency and use of workspaces, thereby supporting clients’ operational resilience and reducing their operating and energy costs.”

As a springboard to Norland’s positioning in the Irish market, the firm held a two-day “Data Centres Ireland” conference late last year. The event, to help data centre managers and professionals plan, implement and manage their existing and future data centre environments, was a sell-out and has boosted the company’s profile and enquiry rate within this important sector in the republic.

Paul Saville-King added: “We have continued to support key industry events around energy management, data centres and FM. Apart from the Data Centre Ireland Show, we were also founding exhibitors of the FM Ireland Show.”