merrion street

Minister for Agriculture, Food & Marine, Michael Creed T.D., today (Wednesday) visited the Oceanology International Trade Exhibition, at London’s Excel Exhibition Centre on day two of his six day visit to the UK. Oceanology International is a trade show and conference held every two years and is recognized as the leading ocean technology and marine science event in the World attracting over 8,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors from over 79 Countries. 

Commenting on the event Minister Creed said

“as Chairman of the Government’s Marine Co-ordination Group, this is an important opportunity to support efforts to promote Irish organisations providing products and services for global marine services and furthermore to highlight Ireland as an attractive location for inward investment in the blue economy. The vision of the ‘Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth’ Strategy is to expand the Irish Ocean economy to a value of 2.4% of GDP by 2030.”

The Minister will also address two important St Patrick’s Day receptions.  This afternoon at the Irish Embassy in London the Minister will speak at a ‘National Day Reception’ attended by the London diplomatic corp, Whitehall officials, business contacts, think tanks and other key figures. Tonight Minister Creed will speak at an Enterprise Ireland, Networking reception in London’s County Hall, bringing together EI client companies and their UK based customers. This is an important opportunity for Irish businesses active in the UK to demonstrate their long term commitment to the UK beyond Brexit.

As part of the Minister’s Programme of engagement with significant UK retailers and purchasers of Irish food, he today met with senior executives in Marks & Spencer Group PLC where he was accompanied by Bord Bia CEO, Tara McCarthy.