West Enterprise Case Studies

Under the PowerBar brand, the company manufactures a range of busbar products and electrical conductors that provide an alternative to the use of electrical cabling for the transmission of electric current within commercial and residential properties. They have customers throughout Europe and recently relocated their manufacturing facility from Derry.

E&I develops and supplies an extensive range of power distribution products, which are put through a rigorous design and testing regime to provide clients with custom solutions. Their products are used throughout a range of industries including telecoms, utilities, medical devices, financial services and marine.

The company employs 280 people and staff are drawn from a wide area including nearby Derry and throughout the Inishowen peninsula.  Many of the employees originally worked in the area’s textile industry, and retrained to work at E&I.  Philip O’Doherty, founder and managing director of E&I says they have an ongoing commitment to training “We have contacts with Letterkenny IT for third level placements and we use FÁS for most training which is very helpful.”

Philip believes that Donegal offers great advantages to his business. He says “The quality of the workforce in Donegal is very high and it’s been a great advantage to us. People are relocating from England, Scotland and other parts of Ireland.  Something I’m particularly proud of is that we’re attracting a lot of excellent young graduates who have studied in Dublin and want to return to Donegal to live.” Further growth of the company is expected in the coming year and staff are attracted to Donegal by benefits like great social amenities and lack of traffic congestion.

Access to the rest of the world, and particularly main markets in London is facilitated by the City of Derry Airport which is only 10 miles from Burnfoot.  Road access is improving between Dublin and Derry, though Philip would like to see further investment in road and even rail services in the future.

E&I Engineering has not escaped unscathed from the current economic downturn but the real impact has been driven by the Euro/Sterling exchange rate rather than any downward pressure on sales.

With support from Enterprise Ireland, E&I recently invested in research and development and Philip O’Doherty says "Irish companies like E&I can succeed by adopting an ambitious export-led growth strategy, underpinned by a strong focus on innovation.  The development of a new R&D Centre, with a dedicated R&D team, will help to drive our international competitiveness and growth into the future.”