Filings for firm owned by Enterprise Ireland chairman Michael Carey are months late

A biscuit maker owned and controlled by Enterprise Ireland chairman Michael Carey has failed to file its annual return and financial statements on time with the Companies Registration Office, with the documents now months late.

But Mr Carey – who was formally named by Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Simon Coveney as Enterprise Ireland chairman in September this year – has insisted the documents for Drogheda-based East Coast Bakehouse have now been signed off and will be filed in the coming week or so. He said the company, where he is a director, will incur a €1,200 late filing fee.

State-owned Enterprise Ireland is an investor in the business alongside a number of well-heeled individuals including Patrick Joy, the founder of Co Louth-based Suretank; Laurence Shields, the founder of LK Shields solicitors; Donard Gaynor, a former executive with US drinks firm Beam; and Stephen Twaddle, a former president of Kellogg Europe.

Companies must file annual returns no later than 56 days after the date to which it is made up. According to CRO records as of yesterday, the last annual return filed by East Coast Bakehouse was on May 10, 2022. That was for the period to November 29, 2021.

Companies that fail to file on time incur just a €100 penalty on the day after the expiry of the filing deadline and only a subsequent €3-a-day daily late fee.

The maximum late filing fee that can be imposed is only €1,200 per return.

More seriously, a company that is late filing its annual return can also be subject to an involuntary strike-off by the companies office.

Mr Carey, who was also reappointed this year by Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage Darragh O’Brien as chair of the Housing Agency, conceded the filings for East Coast Bakehouse are months late.

He said this was due to a delay in finalising the accounts, but said the business is in rude health following major contract wins with UK retail multiples.

“There’s no problem, they’re being filed in the next week or so,” Mr Carey told the Irish Independent.

“They’re a good few months late. There was a… finalising some details for last year’s year end that was a bit more complicated than normal. It was nothing fundamental, it was a finalising of funding.”

While the latest available set of accounts for East Coast Bakehouse – whose other major shareholder is Mr Carey’s wife, Alison Cowzer – show that it had accumulated losses of €20.7m by early 2021, Mr Carey said the business is now where it originally expected to be, and its revenues have rapidly accelerated, with 65pc of its sales being for export to markets including the UK, Scandinavia and Germany.

It secured contracts with Aldi and Asda in the UK this year.

It had faced challenges including Brexit, the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and will be profitable on an operating basis for the 2025 financial year, which ends in February that year, said Mr Carey. It’s already profitable on an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation basis.

In the 12 months to the end of February 2022, revenue was just under €5m, said Mr Carey.

But annualised revenue is now running at €24m, he added.

He reckons the company is now the fastest-growing biscuit maker in Europe and as it reaches full capacity in early 2024 will look to add a major new production line in what’s likely to be a €10m investment.

Mr Carey said East Coast Bakehouse now employs 135 people and on some days is operating on a 24-hour basis, sometimes producing as many as 10,000 packets of biscuits an hour.

It employed half that number a year ago. It makes own-brand and private label biscuits, as well as biscuits produced under contract for other biscuit suppliers.

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