Carry More Weight

Payload advantage sees four Renault Range K Xtrem 50-tonners shift limestone up and over an Irish mountain for Quinn Building Products.

- Rose Jordan

Follow the road south to Derrylin, two hours out of Belfast. Dublin’s a couple of hours further on. It’s wall-to-wall open countryside with glorious views over Northern Ireland’s green fields, broken only by the occasional house or farm. We really could be in the middle of nowhere. But farmland suddenly gives way to large-scale industry, factories, offices and manufacturing plants that line the road into Ballyconnell.

Now green-liveried trucks are everywhere, turning in and out of Quinn Cement, Quinn Therm, Quinn Rooftiles, Quinn Lite, Quinn Quarries, to name a few. This is Quinn country, and that makes it the middle of everywhere round here, both North and South of the border.

The story of how Co. Fermanagh man Sean Quinn set out with a £100 loan back in the ’70s to start a small gravel extraction quarry on his family farm, took on the might of the cement industry and with incessant entrepreneurial drive established the Quinn group of companies – an empire of businesses that made him the richest person in Ireland – is well documented. As are the challenges that have beset him and those businesses since the 2008 crash. Although he’s no longer directly involved in day-to-day operation, it’s clear he still enjoys the loyalty of his local community, and there is renewed and growing confidence in the firms he established.

We turn into Quinn Building Products, headquartered in Derrylin, Co. Fermanagh, near the border with Co. Cavan. Transport manager Gearoid Gilheany extends a warm welcome and, over coffee, explains the unique set up we’re here to see. It’s very big business.