Entrepreneur to address Mayo business network

“Creating opportunity in a downturn – Innovate or Die!” will be the theme of next week’s meeting of the Mayo Open Coffee Club (MOCC) – and the key speaker will be a Mayo man who has carved out a business niche in outer space.

Rory Casey is one of the founders and Managing Director of Fibrepulse, a Castlebar-based company involved in manufacturing fibre optic cables for, among other things, satellites. He will speak at the Wednesday, April 7th, meeting of MOCC in GMIT’s Castlebar campus.

Apart from the novelty of Fibrepulse’s product, their story is also one of hope for all businesses, as its latest phase of success came after the telecoms company reached a potentially disastrous crossroads in 2001.

The telecoms meltdown in 2001 hit Fibrepulse hard, but the turnaround came in December 2002, when Fibrepulse attended an Enterprise Ireland seminar focusing on opportunities in the space industry.

“We would not have even looked at the industry if it were not for the meltdown,” Rory says. The move into outer space paid immediate dividends, and by 2004, Fibrepulse had signed a General Space Technology Programme (GSTP) contract with the European Space Agency that involved partners in several European countries.