Happy Pear uses crowdfunding to raise €2.5 million for UK expansion and to promote ‘social change’

David and Stephen Flynn must be a Happy Pear. Last week the identical twins from Greystones asked supporters of their plant-based food business to put their money where their (vegan) mouths are, and support an equity crowdfunding campaign with at least €500 apiece. By Tuesday they had reached their target, receiving over €2.5 million in reservations.

The shares are being issued to a trust called “STAK The Happy Pear” within a crowd-investing platform called Broccoli, of course. Following a two-year “time lock”, Happy Pear shareholders will be able to sell their stakes to other investors on the platform.

Ireland’s best-known purveyors of pesto and hawkers of hummus have set their sights on expansion in the UK, and three quarters of the funds will be spent there, with the remainder going on expanding the international reach of the Happy Pear app. To do this, they have issued 25,000 shares, costing €100 each, representing 18.9 per cent of the 19-year-old company, giving it a valuation of €10.7 million. Though the business was badly buffeted during Covid, that valuation may prove conservative.

It certainly makes sense for the Flynns to tap the considerable goodwill that exists for their brand, rather than go the conventional route of venture capital or private equity funds. “This isn’t about money. This is about social change,” Stephen Flynn says in a promotional podcast, adding that the crowdfunding model “is a lot more congruent with our philosophy”. Those who can’t afford to buy shares, they say, can always head down to Wicklow and pitch in on the Flynns’ four-acre organic farm.

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RTÉ board wary of BBC’s Gary Lineker row

The RTÉ board has discussed the BBC’s suspension of Gary Lineker for breaching its impartiality rules by criticising the British government’s immigration policy. Just to be clear: we didn’t hear about this from a boardroom leak; it’s in the minutes of the March 23rd meeting. “The Director General referred to the Gary Lineker tweet and the fallout in the UK, and referred to RTÉ’s journalism guidelines,” they say.

We’re not sure what use those guidelines will be if an RTÉ sports presenter starts tweeting criticisms of the Irish government, though. Article 5.5 simply notes that “social media can blur the line between personal and professional, and the simplest misstep could lead you to undermine the credibility of yourself, your colleagues and RTÉ as a whole.” True. It’s what happens after the misstep that’s important.

Larry Mullen plans to raise his roof

While U2 raises the roof in Las Vegas this autumn, stay-at-home drummer Larry Mullen is planning to literally raise the roof on his house in Howth. Tom Phillips & Associates, a firm of town planners, has written to Fingal council on behalf of Mullen’s partner Ann Acheson seeking a decision as to whether lifting the roof of their residence constitutes exempted development.

The house was only completed in 2012, but the firm says that “significant thermal and airtight enclosure issues at roof and eaves level have been discovered”. The proposal is to install insulation above the rafters, “which would result in the raising of the existing roof ridges by 200mm”. The amendments are minor, according to the letter sent to Fingal council earlier this month, and “would be imperceptible on observation of the building from neighbouring sites”. No new line on the horizon then...

Ryanair not the first airline to have a problem landing in Israel

Ryanair cabin crew aren’t the first to lose their bearings when flying into Tel Aviv. Eddie Wilson, the airline’s chief executive, has apologised to the Israeli ambassador to Ireland after a flight attendant told passengers their plane would be landing in “Palestine”. Ryanair said it was an “innocent mistake” by a “junior cabin-crew member”, and there was “no political overtones or intent”.

There have been at least three such “mistakes” by other airlines. In 2002, an Air France pilot descending into Tel Aviv told passengers they were “welcome to Israel-Palestine”. A year later Alitalia sent an apology to the Israeli ambassador to Italy after one of its pilots told passengers they were “welcome to Palestine”. The airline said the pilot would not be flying to Israel again.

In 2015, passengers on an Iberia flight into Tel Aviv were sure they heard the captain say he was about to land “in Palestine”. The Spanish airline initially apologised, but later said the word “Palestine” had not in fact been used. The misunderstanding “could be caused by the similar sound of the Spanish word ‘destino’, meaning destination, with ‘Palestina’,” they said.

The Israeli embassy in Dublin has confirmed that it received a prompt apology from Wilson, and said it “accepts that the issue arose because of the reprehensible behaviour of a Ryanair employee, and did not reflect Ryanair policy”.

Oisin Fanning’s titanic discovery

About 400km off the coast of Newfoundland is a coral reef named after an Irish oil entrepreneur, we discovered this week. The Nargeolet-Fanning Ridge, about 3km down and near the wreck of the Titanic, got its name from Paul-Henry Nargeolet, the French mariner on board the stricken Titan submersible, and also Oisin Fanning, the former stockbroker and chief executive of Smart Telecom who is now chairman of San Leon Energy, an oil and gas explorer with an Africa focus.

Last year Fanning and Nargeolet took a submarine journey down to the Titanic and, the Irish businessman has told BBC Radio’s Today programme, the next day they took a second trip to look for another shipwreck but instead found the volcanic ridge, full of sponges and corals. It has been provisionally named after its discoverers.

Fanning’s interest in oceanography will come as a surprise to some, since he previously told journalists that his passion was horse-riding and that he was the proud possessor of a German dressage horse. “I had a history of the Titanic because my parents were from Northern Ireland, effectively,” he told the BBC. “So I was always interested in it as a child, et cetera.” It’s an expensive hobby: last year’s dives to the wreck as “mission specialist”, as fare-paying adventurers are known, cost $120,000 (€110,000), according to an interview he gave to the New York Times this week.

The Slattery brothers target cutting aviation emissions

Clare brothers Dómhnal and John Slattery are at the forefront of the international drive to decarbonise the aviation industry. Last year Dómhnal was appointed chairman of Vertical Aerospace, a Bristol-based designer of zero-emission electrically powered aircraft. This week his brother John, the chief commercial officer at GE Aerospace, was appointed non-executive chairman of Heart Aerospace, a Swedish company that is developing the ES-30, a regional electric plane with a capacity for 30 passengers.

Due to enter service in 2028, it aims to have a zero-emissions range of 200 kilometres. Using a hybrid propulsion system will allow it fly up to 800km with 25 passengers.

The magazine Aviation Week notes that it is “unusual” for GE Aerospace to allow one of its most senior executives to become chairman of a start-up aircraft manufacturer. Congratulating his brother on LinkedIn, Dómhnall enthused: “He is passionate about the decarbonisation of the aerospace industry, and I know with John’s guidance and counsel Heart will be a major success.”