Larry Goodman is still revered by his peers in the meat industry, writes Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent
Despite being one of the most influential figures in Irish life over the past three decades, little is known about Larry Goodman, the man. There is a surfeit of knowledge about Larry Goodman the businessman, the beef baron, the food king, but of the man himself, virtually nothing.
Newspaper files are stuffed with articles covering the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Beef Industry that brought Goodman the businessman into the full public gaze after it was discovered his company Goodman International was exporting large amounts of non-Irish beef to Iraq, even though it was certified in writing that all of its beef was the product of the Irish Republic. Commercial meat bought from Irish farmers only accounted for 15 per cent of all the beef exported to Iraq, the rest was taken from the EU beef mountain and had already been bought and paid for. This led to the collapse of Goodman International in 1990 when Des O'Malley, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, cancelled Goodman's export insurance cover.
Goodman immediately sued the State for around £150 million in insurance cover, plus damages and costs, and perhaps most significantly, the claim was closely linked to the collapse in 1992 of the Fianna Fáil-PD-led coalition, then led by Albert Reynolds, who had originally sanctioned the export credit insurance to Goodman. Larry Goodman this week dropped that compensation claim.
The beef tribunal gave Irish people a closer insight into the workings of Government and big business and cost the taxpayer a fortune.Goodman was, of course, a national figure before then, controlling, at one stage in the late 1980s, up to 6 per cent of GNP. He was the biggest beef processor in Europe and the man who controlled 40 per cent of the beef kill in Ireland.
But the Ireland of the 1980s was a different Ireland to today. This was the era of Charles J. Haughey and Garret FitzGerald, where the movers and shakers were looked at with envy while we paid the highest personal taxes and mortgage rates in Europe. We watched in horror as tens of thousands of our young people were forced to seek work abroad.
"We were on our uppers and the only stable industries appeared to be the beef industry, and the chemical industry which repatriated all its profits abroad," says one senior civil servant of the time.
"Nowadays, people wonder how the beef industry, the publicans and builders could have such access to Ministers and senior civil servants, but that is how it was. We needed them."
"Goodman, and indeed others in the beef industry, could almost summon a Minister at that time because the employment situation was so dire," he adds.
Larry Goodman, the quiet Dundalk boy who had set up his own business in 1962, literally flew through the 1980s being one of the first Irish business people to own his own helicopter. Although the registration number of the Bell Helicopter, EI-BLG, contains the Goodman initials, many who claim to know him say vanity is not one of his failings.
A former classmate, Brendan McGahon, the former Fine Gael TD from Dundalk, describes Goodman as "one of the most decent and honourable men in Ireland".
Unlike some self-made men, Goodman, who was born in Dundalk in 1937, would not have experienced the physical hunger which drives many such people. He was the second youngest son of a successful Dundalk cattle dealer and is remembered by his contemporaries as always being well dressed and driving a good car when most people were walking.
Larry Goodman showed a flair for business after leaving the Marist College, Dundalk. His first venture, after working with his father for a time, was into the hides and skin business and it was there that he introduced the practice of paying suppliers for their goods on the day of delivery, a practice which continues to this day. In 1962 he set up Anglo Irish Beef Processors to export beef to the Continent and expanded the business over the next 30 years to become the major player in Europe.
"He was a divil to work for but if you did your job, he paid. If you got it wrong you carried the can and got your backside kicked," says one former employee.
A former senior official in the Goodman group recalls that Larry Goodman had one major strength. He knew the value of expertise.
"If there was a problem, Larry would ask who the top expert was in the field. He would hire that person and pay them but he also listened and learned," he says.
Getting it wrong was what all employees feared. That meant a summons to the Ardee, Co Louth office for a Tuesday morning 7 a.m. meeting where judgment would be delivered.
The Ardee office, from which the Goodman operations are controlled, was never in darkness, because Goodman himself had the reputation of working even on Christmas Day. The story goes that with major contracts in the Arab world, Goodman would make a point of being at his desk on the main Christian feast day to show his commitment to his customers. He sold beef to both sides in the bloody Iran/Iraq war and visited both countries during the conflict.
Quiet spoken and neatly dressed, Goodman would not stand out in a crowd, but according to some, he avoids crowds like the plague.
"I don't think he likes people at all and is only interested in business. He does not drink or smoke and has no known vices," said one business rival. "The rest of us might talk about football or racing or other things when we are together, but Larry never does. He has no time or interest in those things, only business."
He inspires confidence and trust in business associates, including those who backed him in the lean times in the mid-1990s and sold out to him again, giving him control of his companies that had been put into receivership.
Last year, his companies recorded pre-tax profits of just over €40 million and insiders in the industry say the Goodman Group has the healthiest bank balance in the meat business on these islands. He now processes 22 per cent of the Irish cattle kill and has a 15 per cent cut of the UK kill where he has focused his attention since the mid-1990s.
Goodman, who lives with his wife Catherine and their two children on their farm near Ardee, has a daily involvement in his farm's cattle feeding lot which can accommodate upwards of 13,000 cattle.
In all, he is reputed to own more than 2,000 acres of land in the north-east and it is on one of these farms the feedlot is situated. His eldest son, at 22 years of age, is currently learning the beef trade from the bottom up, working as an operative in one of the Goodman UK plants. The second son is 18 years-old.
The only place Larry Goodman is known to relax is at the holiday villa he owns in Portugal.
Larry Goodman operates six meat plants in the Republic located at Bandon, Co Cork, Cahir and Nenagh, Co Tipperary, Waterford, Clones, Co Monaghan and Rathkeale, Co Limerick.
He also operates a burger-processing facility at Ballybay in Co Monaghan from where he supplies the Burger King chains in the UK, called Silver Crest Foods.
He also operates two rendering plants, one at Waterford and the other at Cahir.
He owns a number of plants in the UK, where his company operates under the title ABP, and is responsible for 15 per cent of the beef processing kill in the UK.
He is the sole Irish exporter to some of the retail outlets in Britain, including Sainsbury's.
