One of Ireland's richest men says building his €8bn firm happened by chance

THE HEAD OF one of Ireland’s most successful companies says that building up the business “happened by chance”.

Paul Coulson, the head of Irish packaging giant Ardagh, also said that Ireland must look to forge closer links with Europe and that the blame for the financial crash has not been properly doled out.

Ardagh is one of the largest companies to ever come out of Ireland. The firm, which produces glass and metal products such as the beer bottles for companies like Heineken, recently agreed to pay $3.4 billion (€3 billion) to buy a slew of factories all over the world that make metal beverage containers.

The company, founded in 1932 as the Irish Glass bottle company, will now have annual revenues of about $9 billion. Coulson, whose personal wealth is estimated to be in the region of €800 to €900 million, is the executive chairman of Ardagh and owns about 36% of the group along with his family.

Since he became the chairman in 1998, Coulson has helped to completely overhaul and transform it from a small Irish-listed business to a global powerhouse. However, speaking at the Institute of Directors annual lunch in Dublin yesterday, Coulson said that this much of this was due to the kiss of lady luck.

Chance

“I wish I could say this was all part of a grand scheme to build a global packaging group. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.

“This has all happened by chance. The investment in Ardagh in 1998 was the brainchild of my colleague Brendan Dowling. He suggested that this was a small Irish company with a lot of cash on the balance sheet and some very valuable real estate and he was right on both counts. So we would buy a small stake, we bought 10%.

“Quinn (Glass) had built a new plant in Northern Ireland and the Ardagh board wanted to respond using the cash that Brendan had identified and building on real estate that he had also identified.”

Ardagh chaimrnan Paul Coulson

Coulson said that he did not “want that to go on” and decided, with the help of another shareholder, that he would change the board.

“With (his) assistance, I became chairman of Ardagh. That was the start of the flukey packaging company that we ended up with.”

“At that time Ardagh had about 50 million in sales. Today we have become one of the world’s largest packaging groups with annual sales of nearly €8 billion.”

Brexit

During his speech Coulson also decried the UK’s recent decision to leave the European Union, and added that it would likely damage trading relations with Ireland.

“One of the worst examples of bad governance in recent times was the decision of the Cameron government in Britain to put out such an important issue to its people without itself having properly assessed what the real implications of a vote to leave the EU were,” he said.

“It was an incredibly dangerous decision to take and the implications could have a major effect on Britain’s relationship with the EU single market. Britain has now put at risk a huge amount of foreign direct investment.

He added: “What are the implications for Ireland? I suspect they are very serious. I suspect the trading relationships of the two islands are going to be very difficult.

“We need to protect ourselves, our interests are now different from those of Britain. Britain has decided to leave, that’s its decision. We have to ally ourselves with Europeans and we are going to have to see how to best do it.”