Based in Fermoy, Co Cork, it\u2019s the country\u2019s largest ice-cream maker and employs about 100 people.<\/p>\n
Revenue at the company rose 10pc last year to just over \u20ac26m, newly-filed accounts for the business show.<\/p>\n
The renewed profitability of the firm enabled it to pay a \u20ac620,000 dividend to its new owners last year. It now has retained earnings of \u20ac2.2m.<\/p>\n
Silver Pail Dairy entered examinership in late 2022, threatening almost 100 jobs at the firm in the run-up to Christmas. It had been hit by rising input costs, including higher prices for milk, cream and energy.<\/p>\n
Between 2021 and 2022 it had racked up \u20ac5.7m in losses. The company had about \u20ac4m of bank debt when it entered examinership, while other creditors were owed about \u20ac7m at the time it got into trouble.<\/p>\n
The company was sold in March 2023 to Cork buyers Paul and Niall Condon, and Steve Dwyer.<\/p>\n
Niall Condon and other shareholders sold their Classic Drinks business, a wholesaler of wines and spirits, to Pallas Foods in 2019 for millions of euro. Mr Dwyer was also a shareholder and director in Classic Drinks.<\/p>\n
They saw off competition from a number of potential suitors to buy the business. Those potential buyers included Lakeland Dairies and a number of private equity firms.<\/p>\n
Silver Pail Dairy, which was founded in 1978 by Michael Murphy, also makes frozen desserts, frozen yogurt and sorbets.<\/p>\n
The directors noted that revenue rose last year as the company continued to grow and strengthen its performance under the new ownership.<\/p>\n
They said the performance was also reflected in a \u201csignificantly improved\u201d gross margin, which increased to 35pc during 2024 from 31pc a year earlier.<\/p>\n
Silver Pail Dairy\u2019s customers include major grocery retailers such as Tesco. It has supplied Tesco\u2019s own-brand ice-cream since 2020 and earlier this year the two launched new products for the retailer.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal to sell the business to the new owners in 2023, a scheme of arrangement resulted in \u20ac5.7m of the company\u2019s liabilities being eliminated. That included money owed to the Revenue Commissioners, the UK Revenue, and to lenders \u2013 primarily AIB.<\/p>\n
Aside from the significant backing from the current owners, Silver Pail Dairy has also secured finance from PTSB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based in Fermoy, Co Cork, it\u2019s the country\u2019s largest ice-cream maker and employs about 100 people. Revenue at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,24512],"class_list":{"0":"post-182779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-john-mulligan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115556265645200546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}