By Business & Finance 
Business & Finance have released the annual Top 100 Index recognising the top companies operating in Ireland in 2020.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The full list is available to download here
Dawn Meats
Dawn Meats was established in Co. Waterford, Ireland in 1980, and has grown to a business with over €2bn in annual revenue, employing over 7,000 staff in twelve countries. As a family-owned business Dawn Meats remains true to its farming heritage through the close relationships it has forged with over 15,000 Irish farmers. Dawn Meats is a winner of Ibec’s Environmental Business Process award, Bord Bia and SEAI sustainability awards and in 2019 received the Diversity and Inclusion award at the Bord Bia Food and Drink awards. Dawn Meats became the first food processor to achieve the Business Working Responsibly (BWR) Mark across all of its plants in Ireland in 2019 and was named Best Sustainable Meat Producer and Sustainable Supply Chain Achievement Award at the 2020 Green Food & Beverage Producer Awards.
DCC
DCC plc is a leading international sales, marketing and support services group, with a clear focus on performance and growth. It operates through four divisions: LPG, Retail & Oil, Technology and Healthcare. Headquartered in Dublin, it operates in 20 countries, employing approximately 13,000 people. DCC plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100. In its financial year ended 31 March 2020, DCC generated revenue of £14.8 billion and operating profit of £494 million.
Diaceutics
Since inception, Diaceutics’ focus has been on precision medicine and improving the testing ecosystem to ensure more people with life-threatening illnesses are given the right treatment at the right time. Today, more than 42% of all drugs in late-stage development are dependent upon biomarker testing. However, sub-optimal testing practices mean many patients are missing out on the chance to be put on these potentially life-saving medications. Diaceutics’ services help pharmaceutical companies to pinpoint risks and challenges that can get in the way of effective testing and make it difficult to reach all the patients that need to be on specific drugs. In doing so, Diaceutics is revolutionising patient healthcare by improving the commercial success of precision medicine drugs and the last 12 months have been the company’s most successful yet. Following its IPO on the London Stock Exchange in March, Diaceutics is securing the funding to achieve its vision of better patient testing everywhere. This includes an investment of £1m in the acquisition of 16 million additional patient records per annum. On top of that, the company celebrated its expansion into Asia with the establishment of its Asian HQ in Singapore in January. Diaceutics estimates that there are currently more than 300 targeted oncology drugs in late stage development across the major Asian markets. The company will support the launch of–and access to–precision therapies in China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan.
Ding
Founded by Chairman Mark Roden in 2006, Ding enables expats to send mobile phone credit top-ups to friends and family back home. The Dublin-based firm has 200 employees worldwide, with offices in New Jersey and Miami in the US, as well as Dubai, Dhaka, Paris and Bucharest, and is preparing to add 100 new staff by 2021. They work with over 400 mobile phone operators in over 130 countries. Accounts for Ezetop, the unlimited company that owns Ding, show Net revenue rose 10 per cent to $38.3 million last year.
Donnelly Group
Terence Donnelly, executive chairman of the family-owned Group, received a lifetime achievement award at the Mid Ulster Business Excellence Awards in November 2019, recognising the growth of the company, which sells more than 15,000 vehicles a year from its nine locations, and employs more than 700 people staff.
DPS Engineering
DPS Group is a global consulting, engineering and construction management company, serving high-tech industries around the world. DPS employs industry experts in key locations in Europe, the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, bringing world-class resources and the latest innovative technologies to every project. Offering specialised architectural, engineering and construction services to the advanced technology, process chemical, industrial and life sciences sectors, they work with semiconductor, solar, nanotechnology, pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and process industry clients.
Dublin Aerospace
Dublin Aerospace is one of the world’s leading providers of Aerospace MRO services with capabilities in APU Repair & Overhaul, Base Maintenance, IDG Repair & Overhaul and Landing Gear Repair & Overhaul. Winners of the 145 Top Shop awards for both APU and Landing Gear Repair & Overhaul 2018.
Dunnes Stores
The Dunne family has a rich history in Irish retail, having first opened a store in 1944 on Cork’s Patrick’s Street. The chain is now one of the country’s major retail outlets, battling with international players such as Tesco, M&S, Aldi and Lidl, and frequently retaining pole position as Ireland’s favourite supermarket. Kantar Worldpanel’s research for the 12 weeks to 3 November 2019 show Dunnes’ growth of 4.4% was again the fastest among the three biggest retailers. Ireland’s largest supermarket also increased its market share by 0.4 percentage points, bringing it to 22.8%. Since 1992, Margaret Heffernan has been at the helm of Dunnes Stores. Her leadership has rejuvenated the brand, fostering partnerships with Irish fashion and homewares designers in recent years, and will be noted as one of Ireland’s great transformation operations.
Eir
Eir is the principal provider of fixed-line and mobile telecommunications services in Ireland with approximately 2 million customers. The company has the most extensive telecommunications network in Ireland both in terms of capacity and geographic reach. Eir provides a comprehensive range of advanced voice, data, broadband and TV services to the residential, small business, enterprise and government markets. Eir has a mobile division which operates under the eir Mobile brand. The wholesale division, Open eir, is the largest wholesale operator in Ireland, providing products and services to over 70 national and 25 international wholesale customers across a range of regulated and unregulated markets. Revenue for the year ended 30 June 2019 was €1.25 billion and Adjusted EBITDA was €578 million. End of year results announced by eir in September 2019 revealed results in line with expectations. The company experienced continued year on year growth in fibre broadband, postpay mobile, TV, sport and product bundling.
ElectroRoute
Founded in 2011, ElectroRoute is a homegrown Irish energy supplier aiming to liberalise markets through analysis and new practices in electricity & gas trading. The company also offer client services for renewable energy firms, and has begun to open offices overseas: a UK office was established in 2017, and ElectroRoute now plans to enter the Japanese power market where its principle owner, Mitsubishi Corporation, is based. Registered in Donegal, the company is headquartered in Dublin with a team of over 60 energy professionals.
Emovis
Emovis is a global leader in toll-based mobility solutions. We help millions of motorists travel seamlessly along some of the world’s most advanced and busiest cities and highways. To do this successfully, we blend cutting-edge technology, best-in-class customer handling and innovative processes, to meet ever-changing requirements.
Energia
With a commitment to renewable energy, innovation and tech, Energia has been the driving force behind change in the Irish energy sector over the past 20 years. Energia’s 100% green energy is the power behind more than 250,000 homes and businesses across the Republic of Ireland. Energia has committed over €1bn to large infrastructure projects including dozens of windfarms; a bio energy plant that converts brown bin waste in to electricity; and a bus service powered by hydrogen. Recently recognised with the Business Working Responsibly mark, Energia is committed to communities around Ireland and contributing positively to the lives of people in Ireland. Energia Group has almost 1m customers across the island of Ireland providing affordable energy with innovative tariffs and services like a smart phone app where people can monitor their usage; a smart home store where people can get the latest tech for their homes; and micro-gen products like solar panels with storage batteries where people get paid to generate electricity for their community.
Ervia
The company formerly known as Bord Gáis Éireann, Ervia form the background of Ireland’s gas-supply network. A commercial semi-state, Ervia is a key supplier of both services and infrastructure for gas and water in Ireland through its subsidiaries Gas Networks Ireland and Irish Water. In addition, the group’s Aurora Telecom business supplies dark fibre broadband using newly-developed fibre optic technology. Headed up by Group CEO Mike Quinn, the group was suggested as a potential new operator for the National Broadband Plan by Fianna Fáil.
ESB
The original: the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) is Ireland’s oldest state-owned electricity company. Historically operated as a monopoly, the group has liberalised in recent years to become a commercial semi-state body operating in competition with other energy suppliers. One of Ireland’s largest companies, the group employs in excess of 7,000 people, and it provides electricity to over 1.4 million customers. The company ESB currently generates 43% of the island’s electricity capacity and holds a regulated asset base of €9 billion.
eShopWorld
eShopWorld is the cross-border e-commerce leader, empowering the world’s best-loved brands and retailers to make global shopping better, safer, simpler and faster, end-to-end. From compliance, data security, fraud protection, taxes, and tariffs to checkout, delivery, returns, customer service, and demand generation, our powerful combination of technology and human ingenuity covers the entire shopper journey across 200 markets.
Fane Valley
Northern Ireland-based Fane Valley Co-operative was formed over 115 years ago, and is now recognised as one of Ireland’s most progressive agri-food concerns. The group hold a range of interests across the sector, including red meats, breakfast cereals, animal feed, and livestock services. 100%-owned by its 1250 shareholders, the Co-operative has annual sales which top £525 million which flow from its locations across Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Belgium, and England.
Fenergo
Increasingly recognised as the industry standard for Client Lifecycle Management solutions, Fenergo is a growing heavyweight in software for client on-boarding. The company was launched in Dublin in 2009 by Marc Murphy and now has offices which span North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2015, Fenergo received an injection of $85m from Insight Venture Partners and Aquiline Capital Partners aimed at accelerating its growth and reach to meet regulatory and on-boarding challenges in new markets and financial institutions.
Fexco
Founded in 1981 by Brian McCarthy, the international payments and FX company headquartered in Killorglin, Co Kerry, has over 2,800 employees worldwide, across 30 markets in Europe, the Middle East, North America, Latin America and Australasia. Its profit before tax jumped 80% to €19.3m in 2017. Although online and digital foreign exchange transactions remain the bigger part of Fexco’s overall operations, the Killorglin-headquartered company operates more than 100 high street foreign exchange shops in the UK and Ireland and a further 950 through the franchise model. It made two UK acquisitions during 2018 in the form of Change-Link and the Thomas Exchange Group.
First Derivatives
First Derivatives is a global technology and services provider with 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s largest finance, technology, automotive, manufacturing and energy institutions. Its Kx Streaming Analytics platform, built on the kdb+ time-series database, is an industry leading high-performance, in-memory computing, streaming analytics and operational intelligence platform. It delivers the best possible performance and flexibility for high-volume, data-intensive analytics and applications across multiple industries. The Group operates from 14 offices across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, and employs more than 2,500 people worldwide.
Fiserv fka First Data
Fiserv (formerly known as First Data) is a global leader in payments and financial technology, serving thousands of financial institutions and millions of merchants and businesses in more than 100 countries. The company helps clients achieve best-in-class results through a commitment to innovation and excellence in areas including account processing and digital banking solutions; card issuer processing and network services; payments; e-commerce; merchant acquiring and processing; and the Clover™ cloud-based point-of-sale solution. Fiserv is a member of the S&P 500® Index and the FORTUNE®500, and is among the FORTUNE Magazine World’s Most Admired Companies®.
Flutter Entertainment fka Paddy Power Betfair
Paddy Power Betfair bookmaking business was created by the merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, completed in February 2016. In March 2019 the company announced that it would rebrand as Flutter Entertainment, pending shareholder approval at the company’s annual general meeting in May. Flutter was originally the name of a betting exchange acquired by Betfair in December 2001.
Genesis Automation
A Cork-based healthcare software firm, founded by Noel O’Hanlon, a finalist in the 2018 EY Entrepreneur of the Year programme, Genesis Automation is a specialised traceability and analytics platform which helps hospitals to manage supplies and enhance patient safety. The company has a close relationship with the UK’s National Health Service, partnering with a number of NHS trusts and helping to grow its client base to a total of 27 hospitals. In May 2018, Genesis secured a $1 million (€882,000), five-year deal with the Texas-based Driscoll Children’s Hospital, following a €21m raise to grow its operations in the US market—with €20m invested in the company by a British-based private equity fund, and a further €1m invested by IPF Partners, a Luxembourg-based healthcare funder which had previously backed the company with around €6m in venture debt. This year started on a high for the company with another multimillion dollar deal with a US private hospital chain Novant Health announced in January, which the firm expects will act as a springboard to rapid expansion there. Novant Health comprises 15 hospitals spread across north and south Carolina and Virginia. The company is the market leader for its service in the UK, but has been slower to expand in Ireland given the fragmented nature of the market. Tallaght Hospital signed up to its service last year. Additionally, Genesis is incorporated in British Columbia in Canada in a bid to gain market share there.
Glen Dimplex
The Glen Dimplex Group, founder by Martin Naughton in 1973 remains privately held, with manufacturing and development centres for its electrical goods in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, China and many other locations around the world. Glen Dimplex North America has grown substantially, and dominates in the electric heating, stoves, fireplace and industrial cooling markets across the continent, offering a range of highly innovative products and solutions. Dimplex Thermal Solutions is a US manufacturer of industrial and medical process chillers.
Grafton Group
Grafton is an international trade focused, multi-channel distributor of construction products. The success of the business is based on the quality of the products it distributes and the quality of the service it provides to its customers. The Group aims to build on its leading market positions in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands and to grow internationally in merchanting and related markets.
Greencore
We are a leading manufacturer of convenience food in the UK and our purpose is to make every day taste better. To help us achieve this we have a model called The Greencore Way, which is built on the differentiators of People at the Core, Great Food, Excellence and Sustainability – The Greencore Way describes both who we are and how we will succeed. We supply all of the major supermarkets in the UK. We also supply convenience and travel retail outlets, discounters, coffee shops, foodservice and other retailers. We have strong market positions in a range of categories including sandwiches, salads, sushi, chilled snacking, chilled ready meals, chilled soups and sauces, chilled quiche, ambient sauces and pickles, and frozen Yorkshire Puddings. In FY20 we manufactured 619m sandwiches and other food to go products, 116m chilled prepared meals, and 264m bottles of cooking sauces, pickles and condiments. We carry out more than 10,000 direct to store deliveries each day. We have 16 world-class manufacturing sites in the UK, with industry-leading technology and supply chain capabilities. We generated revenues of £1.2bn in FY20 and employ approximately 12,200 people. We are headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. For further information go to www.greencore.com or follow Greencore on social media
Havok
Havok is a leading provider of games development technologies, which have been used in top franchises including Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty. Their products have also been used to drive special effects in movies including Harry Potter, James Bond and the Matrix series. Havok has offices in Dublin, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Germany. Founded in Dublin in 1998 by Hugh Reynolds and Steven Collins, it was acquired by Microsoft. In 2015.
Business & Finance Top 100 Companies (alphabetical):
View part one (A-D)
View part two (D-H)
View part three (H-O)
View part four (O-W)
