Marketing executive turned entrepreneur Alison Cowzer is one of two new investors considering business pitches in the new series of Dragons’ Den starting on RTÉ One this weekend. Cowzer, whose career in marketing started with Tedcastle Oil Products (TOP), was later appointed to other marketing positions with Fruitfield and L’Oreal in the UK.
She later worked with Jacob Fruitfield. Her husband, Michael Carey, a seasoned food marketer, later sold the business to Valeo in 2011. Jacob Fruitfield’s two factories in Dublin had been closed and production of Kimberly, Mikado, Coconut Creams and Club moved abroad. Cowzer and Carey founded Company of Food for investments in new start-ups.
Company of Food’s other investments include Spanish tapas restaurant Zaragoza.
They re-entered food manufacturing last year by co-founding the East Coast Bakehouse biscuit factory. Cowzer’s title is marketing and innovation director. East Coast Bakehouse produces plain, cookies and chocolate-coated biscuits. Around €15 million in investment was secured, with €2.5m spent on buying a disused steel factory in Drogheda, Co Louth.
The factory on Donore Road houses 50,000 sq ft of production space and 8,000 sq ft for offices.
The founders raised €3.5m from 12 investors and won backing from Enterprise Ireland. They have a near 50 per cent stake through Company of Food. Other investors include Stephen Twaddell, a former European president of Kellogg’s – which, oddly enough, was the food behemoth whose corporate culture clashed with Carey’s ideals – and local businessman Pat Joy of the Suretank Group. Both are non-executive directors.
Most of the East Coast Bakehouse biscuits are for export. They produce a mix of branded products, own label for retailers and outsourced production for other biscuit makers. The UK biscuit market is worth over €2 billion annually. In Ireland, about €3.3m worth of biscuits is sold by retailers every week, which – aside from artisan producers – is largely imported.
The plan is for the East Coast Bakehouse to be profitable by the end of year two.
Cowzer was project director of Soul of Haiti and is on Goal’s advisory board. Last year she visited the charity’s ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone. She has a wide interest in politics which led her to give some support to Renua. Carey chairs Bord Bia and previously served as a non-executive director of PR agency Drury Porter Novelli.
Dragons’ Den
Now in its seventh season, the latest eight-part series sees pitches to the dragons across food, fashion, beauty, fitness, education and journalism interests. It marks the highest percentage of female entrepreneurs in the show’s history, with €930,000 in funds.
Dragons’ Den will be broadcast for eight weeks at 9.30pm from this Sunday until early June. The series is sponsored by Emirates Airlines and produced by Screentime ShinAwil.
