MBTAs: Who will take home the Best Local Enterprise Award?
‘Creating a top-class office and training environment’
Nationwide Safety Training Network Ltd.
About..
Nationwide Safety Training is a Health & Safety Training and Consultancy business based in Dunboyne, with clients located all over the country. Founded in 2016 with one part-time employee, the business has grown to four full-time employees plus several contract trainers.
It offers over 100 safety courses and services to a wide range of clients across multiple sectors including the Construction, Industrial, Manufacturing, Pharma, Healthcare, Childcare, Office and Services sectors.
2021 has been a busy year for National Safety Training as it hired a new full-time employee, purchased its own premises in Dunboyne and remodelled it to create a top-class office and training environment.
It is also on track to have its best sales year ever and now to top it all off it has been shortlisted for a Meath Business Award.
Lessons learned from the last 18 months
Resilience is the key word that resonates with the business when it looks back over the last 12-18 months. It had a very steep learning curve, like a lot of businesses as its business literally collapsed in March 2021.
Management spent the early stages of the pandemic wondering what they were going to do to survive.
A positive step from the pandemic over the last 18 months is that it gave management the opportunity to step back and review the business, helping to understand what was working and what was not, and this in turn helped the team to adapt and reassess its offering and moved much of its business online.
As a result the business not only survived the pandemic, but has indeed thrived.
‘An essential business thriving through difficult times’
Robo Apply Ltd.
About...
Robo Apply Ltd. was set up in Moyfeigher, Ballivor in September 2019. It manufactures customised label printer applicators, for the packaging, and pharmaceutical industries. Work to date has included machines to label thoracic seal (Chest) units, Printer cartridges, food supplements, apple tarts, recycled plastic, artificial hips, integration to robots, and high-speed labelling of packaged products.
The factory is equipped with milling machines, and a lathe for parts manufacture. All its machines are CE certified. The controls are mainly Siemens, and software driven, by Total Integrated Automation (TIA). Its latest machine is printing a label, using a ZE500 print engine, and blowing it onto a box.
Given its role as an essential business and work with pharmaceutical companies alone, owner Daniel Spaight highlights that Rabo Apply has had a very busy couple of years.
Lessons learned from the last 18 months
The Covid 19 pandemic has given Robo Apply an opportunity to improve the factory and components of its product. In that time it also developed a machine to apply double adhesive, onto mems (Micro Electric Mechanical Sensors). The business is the only original Equipment
Manufacturer (O.E.M.) of label applicators in Ireland and has had a very successful period during Covid 19. It has showed great resilience and
‘Kells firm calibrated for success’
CalX Instrumentation Services Ltd.
About...
CalX started trading in June 2019 with 14 staff following the merger of two former Meath businesses. Today it has 42 staff and continues to expand across the island of Ireland and beyond. The Kells based business provides Calibration Management to clients in regulated manufacturing industries.
It works with clients in pharmaceutical, medical device manufacturing, dairy and food processing and general manufacturing sectors.
It is the largest NSAI approved verifier of fuel pumps on forecourts across Ireland.
Its growth has been significant over the last two and a half years and the quality of its staff and management teams have been the key to that growth. It has teams of technicians working across Ireland and has a strong focus on training the next generation.
It currently has 10 apprentices enrolled in Instrumentation, Electrical Instrumentation, Accounting Technician and Sales programmes. We also work closely with TUD Blanchardstown and have students enrolled on a course training the next generation of technicians for calibration work.
Lessons learned from the last 18 months
CalX and most of its clients are classed as essential services. Like every business the pandemic was challenging, but the main challenge was to provide the same level of service while still observing the rules, protecting employee and client health, and ensuring business could function properly. The hugely positive responses it received from Customer NPS surveys conducted over the last 12 months show that it has achieved this. Operating on a day-to-day basis presented specific challenges.
To meet customer concerns engineering teams were divided into pods that operated independently with little or no contact with any other CalX team members outside their pod.