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Going wild for juice
Sunday, October 12, 2008 By Cheryl Rickard
Diarmuid Crowley was working for Pepsi in Cork when he saw the way the market was going for soft drinks.

‘‘Health and wellbeing were the trend and I thought there was an opening in the Irish market for healthy fresh juice drinks,” said Crowley. It was an observation that changed his career path, leading him to set up his own drinks firm, Wild Orchard, in 2000.

Crowley studied chemistry at Queens University in Belfast and joined Wyeth Nutritional in 1994, before moving to Pepsi. He was a lab analyst at first, but spent his last four years at Pepsi as juice business manager before founding Wild Orchard.

He co-owns the firm with business partner John O’Keeffe, whom he met when he was setting up the company. The first products were developed in Crowley’s kitchen using family, friends and neighbours as focus groups and product testers.

A grant package from Limerick County Enterprise Board and financing from Bank of Ireland’s business support unit in Limerick helped get the business off the ground.

‘ ‘Our products are smoothies and juices, 100 per cent natural, healthy and free from additives - basically fruit in a bottle,” said Crowley, whose CV also includes stints as a window cleaner, a member of Aer Lingus ground staff, and with the British Forestry Commission.

Each Wild Orchard smoothie or juice contains two servings of fruit, and Crowley believes the drinks stand out from competitors because they are of premium quality and are Irish made. The firm employs ten people at the Enterprise Centre in Hospital, Co Limerick, and Crowley enjoys being his own boss, ‘‘standing or falling based on my own decisions and actions’’.

‘‘Some days I spend the whole day in production and maintenance, and other days I don the suit and meet customers and suppliers. I still like to be involved in product development and raw material selection,” he said.

Crowley wants to build the company’s share of the Irish smoothie market. ‘‘I believe strongly in the quality of Wild Orchard products and Irish food in general and believe we can do more to get our message out to the Irish public,” he said.

He added that the company would continue to improve its technical and manufacturing capability to attract more contract business. Wild Orchard products are only available in the Republic of Ireland at the moment, but the firm exports private label smoothies on a contract basis.

The company has also been recently approached to act as an adviser on branded smoothie launches in foreign markets, an area that Crowley would like to explore further.

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