The Irish company tasked with showcasing Elon Musk's latest bright idea to the world

AN IRISH PRODUCTION company has been tasked with showcasing SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk’s latest project, Hyperloop One, at the company’s global exhibition debut in Berlin.

Catapult, the first events production agency to be set up in Ireland in 1999 and has worked with the likes of Web Summit, Airbnb and Sky, developed the design concept for Hyperloop One’s debut showcase at transport fair InnoTrans, which took place earlier this week.

Hyperloop One is developing a new method of transport that is based on electric propulsion through a low pressure tube that will allow vehicles to move faster than the speed of a train.

Speaking to Fora about the collaboration with Musk’s latest project, Catapult founder and managing director Ronan Healy said the discussion with Hyperloop One began in front of the Web Summit main stage last year when the US-based group were in Dublin for the event.

“They had never done a public event as Hyperloop One. All they had done was specific ones where they do a test track. This was a trade show, so they had never presented their brand publicly before.

“That was a big piece of work to take on. I had to physically go over to the US and work it out with the head of operations and head of marketing. What’s lovely is that the end result is nearly exactly the first design we did. Obviously there were some tweaks, but the shape is the exact same.”

Hyperloop One InnoTrans stand

Healy said that this year has taken him by surprise with how busy the company has been. The deal to work with Hyperloop One wasn’t even in Catapult’s pipeline until February of this year.

“At the start of January, if I was a betting man I don’t know if I would have said we would be working with Hyperloop One,” he added

Going to Lisbon

After originally starting out as a company purely focused on the Irish market, Catapult has expanded over the last 17 years and now looks after the production side of events beyond the Irish shores.

“We did an Intercom Tour that ended up being in twelve different cities,” said Healy. “If you had spoken to me this time last year, there’s not a chance I would have guessed that we would be in 12 different cities doing 16 different events.”

Another event that will bring Catapult to a new city this year is Web Summit. Even though Irish-founded conference has left Dublin for Lisbon in Portugal, Healy’s company will still be looking after some key aspects of the production side of the operation.

“They probably value us the most from a design point of view. We have designed most of their stages and certainly the centre stage every year. We also did those lovely stages where we collaborated with artists like Maser.

“If you get a designer who understands your brand, that is a harder thing to transfer than someone who can put in a sound system for you.”

Busiest week

This week was one of Catapult’s busiest since the company was set up in 1999, according to Healy. The agency has been involved in seven different events over the past seven days alone, producing the likes of new tech conference SaaStock and the Allianz Business to Arts Awards.

Most recent filed accounts for Catapult show profits at the company increased by nearly €350,000 in the year that ended 31 December 2015, pushing accumulated profits to over €810,000.

Healy said the company is usually involved in producing different elements of up to 200 events per year and it can be a challenge to prevent the company from being too stretched.

“I hire people who are better than me and I always have, that could be either design or production or whatever that may be. That goes for your immediate colleagues and also the suppliers.

“Our director of operations is Des O’Leary and he is the best producer I have ever come across. He is doing the majority of the juggling on the events side and I do the business side with accounts, finances and HR. I get something like Hyperloop One and I hand it to him and he looks after it.”