Moving up league with perfect pitch

ONE MORE THING: IT MIGHT have a low profile here but Dublin-based Support in Sport is a premier league player overseas in laying football pitches and other sports surfaces.

Run by Sligo man George Mullan, it has just secured multimillion-dollar contracts in Angola and Iraq, which are expected to lift group turnover to €37 million in 2012 from €25 million last year.

In Angola, SIS has landed a $14 million contract laying out gardens, plants and recreation areas for the government-backed Luanda Bay project, which involves the reclamation of land. This is a spin-off from laying football pitches in 2009 for Angola’s hosting of the Africa Cup of Nations, with a short turnaround time.

In Iraq, SIS will lay a number of football pitches in Basra for the staging of the 2013 Gulf Cup of Nations.

SIS was set up in the late 1990s when Mullan left pharma group Wyeth, where he had worked on company turnarounds.

“This business came up and I decided I’d like to do my own turnaround,” he told me this week from Sydney, where he was taking a short break from the Rugby World Cup.

SIS has a core staff of 70 which is bolstered for projects. It grows turf in Spain, France and the Netherlands, and has a factory in Britain.

It recently opened an office in Dubai – that’s a nod towards the staging of the 2022 Fifa World Cup in neighbouring Qatar – and has signed a joint venture in Russia, which will host the 2018 edition.

Its expansion is funded from cashflow and SIS has no borrowings.

“I’m old-fashioned in that I don’t like having debt,” he said.

SIS has a blue-chip client list including European soccer powers Real Madrid, Manchester United and Juventus.

For €150,000 to €200,000, it can whip out a pitch in eight hours and lay a new one in the same timeframe for use the following day.

In spite of its overseas credentials, SIS gets little work in Ireland. It has just completed a five-a-side football complex at the Spawell in Templeogue for Powerleague, the biggest such operator in the UK.

“It’s nearly all export,” said Mullan, who lives in Sligo. “Up to three years ago, we were a small player internationally but we’ve moved up a division. Our plan is to keep growing.”