Industry category - Sap Holdings Ltd

Entrepreneur: Thomas Walsh
Business Activity: Mature Tree Production

SAP Holdings Ltd was set up in 1971/72 in Carbury, Co Kildare when a group of 5 college graduates purchased 180 acres of cut over bog. The company’s main business activity is Mature Tree Production with an expected turnover in excess of €30m in 2006. Employment has grown from 10 to 305 across production and trading. In 2005, the company’s payroll bill was circa €7.25 million.

Sap Holdings Ltd is made up of 4 divisions: Sap Nurseries Ltd which accounts for 30% of operations, Sap Landscapes Ltd accounting for 25% of operations, Sap Holland B.V accounting for 23% of operations and Sap Retailing accounting for the remainder.

Ornamental trees and shrubs for horticultural wholesale, landscape and garden centre markets.  The wholesale market is made up of Local Authorities, large institutions like Golf Courses, Health Boards, Landscape Contractors, Garden centres and Stud Farms.  The Landscape customers are Property Developers, N.R.A., I.D.A., Municipal Authorities, Landscape Architects, Development Agencies and others institutions like Banks, Building Societies. The company’s trading house is based in Zundert on the Belgian/Dutch border where they sell and distribute €7m of traded products from Moscow to Stockholm.

Entrepreneurial Questions

What vision prompted you to start up in business?
In the 60’s land in Ireland was used solely for low profit food production.  Indigenous horticulture was in its infancy but prospering in continental Europe.  These identified opportunities needed to be grasped.

Describe your progression from start up to your current status?
The initial years were a struggle but were sustained by a determination and belief in a developing market.  The Tiger years delivered a realisation of our vision and allowed us to push on with further refinement and diversification of services.

What was the biggest risk you have taken?
Uprooting nursery production from Kildare and my family from Dublin in ’85 in order to headquarter in Tipperary - a necessary decision to progress the business from a turnover of €2m to its current €30m.

Who or what has most contributed to your success?
Having Jerry O’Reilly as business partner for 35 years.  He has boundless energy, great courage and vision.  He never takes “no” for an answer and always pursues win/win deals to achieve specified goals.

What is your biggest business achievement?
A recognition by Dublin City Co. of our capabilities which resulted in our appointment to work exclusively with them on the Millennium project of refurbishing tree planting in O’Connell St, Dublin.

What is the best piece of business advice you ever received?
My mothers words “You reap what you sow and a job well planned is a job half completed”.

Express the biggest challenge you see your industry facing.
To have completed the repositioning of our production, landscape contracting and trading business to meet the challenge of a slow down in our industry and safeguard the careers of our 305 employees.

Name a famous international entrepreneur you most admire and why?    
Sean Quinn because he confronts the opposition in simple businesses, uses that native business acumen and guile, found in small farmers along the border with Northern Ireland and on the Western seaboard from Kerry to Donegal, to reach his personal goals.

How do you re-charge your batteries?
Take my wife Valerie and selected friends to the sunshine in either Naples, Florida or the Cost Del Sol for a bit of good eating, drinking or having a good laugh – especially at ourselves.