Finance & Management
Finance & Management News

Finance & Management News

New Campaign encourages businesses to save time, money and energy
A new campaign recently launched by Neale Richmond, T.D., Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail is encouraging small businesses across the country to avail of supports that will help them save time, money and energy.

The “All In a Day’s Work” campaign by the Local Enterprise Offices is focused on highlighting the supports that will enable small businesses to make significant changes to the way they work that will help them now and in the future. These supports include the Lean, Green and Digital programmes, all of whom enable small businesses to become more competitive and productive in how they work.

Figures from the Local Enterprise Offices show that the Lean for Business programme, running since 2015 with Enterprise Ireland, has helped save businesses an average of €34,000 by helping them work more efficiently and improving their processes.

The programme has saved Irish companies over €28million since it began and is free to all small businesses through their Local Enterprise Office, who are based in the local authorities across the country. The figures also highlighted that the businesses that did avail of these programmes had an average 31% increase in their output or production.

The “All In a Day’s Work” campaign aims to encourage small businesses to link in with their Local Enterprise Office to find out what support is best suited to them at their stage of business and how it can benefit them.

The Local Enterprise Offices also run a number of initiatives to foster entrepreneurship across the country. These include Local Enterprise Week, the National Enterprise Awards, the Student Enterprise Programme, National Women’s Enterprise Day and Local Enterprise Showcase.

The Local Enterprise Offices in local authorities are funded by the Government of Ireland through Enterprise Ireland.

Established in 2014, the Local Enterprise Offices are the essential resource for any entrepreneur looking to start a business or any small business that is looking for support or advice to help them grow. Since their inception eight years ago, the Local Enterprise Offices have helped create over 25,000 jobs across the country.

The LEO’s work with thousands of client companies across Ireland in a diverse range of sectors offering mentoring, training, expert advice and financial supports to small businesses.

For more information on the campaign – www.AllInADaysWork.ie

BIA Innovator Campus – the first National Centre of Excellence for Irish start up, micro and small food businesses
Ireland’s first National Centre of Excellence dedicated to supporting start up, micro and small food businesses was officially opened by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Athenry, Co. Galway on Friday 26th January 2024. BIA Innovator Campus will drive regional and national growth in Ireland’s agri-food sector and is designed to facilitate the launch and development of new and existing food businesses at all stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

The impressive new state of the art campus, which spans three buildings over 23,000 square feet, is co-located on the Teagasc, Athenry Campus and is the first of its kind in Ireland. Addressing the food community’s specific need for food grade workspace, the campus offers four fully kitted out pay per use production units and twelve independent “own door” production units for lease.

In addition to these facilities, the BIA Innovator Campus team also provide a powerful mix of technical, innovation and commercial supports to the food community and benefits from direct links to research, development, and innovation with the Teagasc Food Programme.

More than €8 million has been provided in capital funding from Enterprise Ireland, Department of Rural and Community Development, Galway County Council, Teagasc, Galway Rural Development/LEADER and Western Development Commission to deliver the project. The BIA Innovator Campus has the highest impact collaboration of public, industry, community, and education backing assembled to date in the Irish food sector.

In addition to the impressive on-site spaces, the BIA Innovator Campus will host a calendar of in-house events as well as facilitating several education and training courses delivered by the Galway Roscommon Education Training Board. Looking to build knowledge, relationships, and opportunities outside of Ireland, the BIA Innovator Campus is currently active in the EU project sphere and working on a number of European food and entrepreneurship-focused Erasmus+ and Interreg projects.