Shearing legend hooked on CanAm
Sir David Fagan, world-renowned competitive sheep shearer with 642 shearing titles worldwide and a knighthood to his name, now runs beef and dairy operations near Te Kuiti with wife Wendy and son Jack.
Based at Borris in County Carlow, the business, owned by global nutrition company Alltech since 2016, currently employs around 115 people.
According to the owners, major hikes in steel prices, component supply chain issues and a lack of available labour have all contributed to their difficulties. Alltech, based in Kentucky US, says it is fully behind the brand and working towards finding solutions for their problems.
A spokesperson said, “Like many other companies in the industry, Keenan has faced difficult headwinds over the past two to three years.
“We still believe in the potential we saw at Keenan when we purchased the business in 2016, yet we now realise that we did not integrate it deeply enough in the Alltech family. As a result, Keenan has struggled to stay resilient during these recent challenges.”
Alltech has also revealed that it is investigating the possibility of outsourcing its manufacturing functions to other companies, with Turkey being mentioned in other news articles, although Alltech has stated that Keenan will remain an Irish company and continue to operate from its current site.
The spokesperson commented: “Looking to complement our expertise, we are looking at manufacturing partnerships, as we believe this might enable us to meet our customer expectations for quality, on-time delivery and operational support in a currently challenging manufacturing environment.
“At this point, these conversations are only exploratory, and we have no intention of developing a Keenan manufacturing facility on any other location.”
As Dairy News goes to press, we understand that several staff members have received letters notifying them of a risk of redundancy, so they are now in a period of consultation before any final decisions are made.
