Larry Goodman

Laurence "Larry" Goodman (born 15 September 1937) is an Irish businessman, chiefly involved in the beef processing industry.

He is the 6th generation of a livestock and meat exporting family and founded what is now ABP Food Group in 1954.

He is the Executive Chairman of the company which has grown to become one of Europe’s largest agri-business companies with 51 processing plants in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Poland.

ABP employs over 11,000 people.

Separately, the Goodman family office has business interests in property, healthcare and productive arable and beef farming.

In the late 1960s Goodman bought Anglo-Irish Meats in Dundalk, which put him into the processing industry in a substantial way.

He then began exporting, building up contacts in the Middle East in particular.

He sold meat to Libya, Iran, Iraq and Egypt – often going himself as salesman.

He was on the advisory committee for HSBC's opening of operations in Ireland in 1979, along with Dermot Nolan, Michael Carvill and Peter Hutson.

In April 1980 Anglo Irish Meat Group purchased a meat plant at Bagenalstown, County Carlow from Meade-Lonsdale for around £2.2m.

In June 1980 it was announced that Goodman would invest £10m for a new meat plant in Ardee, County Louth, employing 360 people "when it reaches full production".

It also announced an additional £10m investment to expand operations at Cahir, Nenagh and Bagenalstown.

In October 1980, Goodman bought Fermanagh Meats in Enniskillen for about £1.5m.

The plant employed 60 people and processed about 1,000 head of cattle a week.

By this time Goodman's meat empire was turning over about £100m a year.

In July 1981 it was announced that the IDA would put £2m towards the £9m expansion of Goodman's plants.

One of his companies, Irish Agricultural Feed Co also built a feed manufacturing facility at Castlebellingham, and a complex to "over-winter up to 15,000 cattle to boost supplies to the factories at a time when few cattle are finished for slaughter".

The complex "was the result of 14 years research" and cost £2m.

By this time Anglo Irish Group employed some 700 people and turnover had reached £120m per year.

In January 1982 it was announced that Anglo Irish Beef Group had won a £25.5m contract to supply beef to Iraq.

The contract involved supplying 9,000 tonnes of boneless consumer cuts and frozen bone-in meat and was part of an overall order for 54,000 tonnes of beef placed by Iraq.

In March 1983, AIBG acquired the four Northern Ireland factories of the animal by-products processors Robert Wilson for around £1m.

By this stage AIBP was slaughtering more than 250,000 cattle a year, and 10,000 cattle were being fattened at Goodman's feeding lots in Louth.

Later that year, in April 1983, he won contracts to supply $50m worth of fresh frozen beef to Iran and Morocco.

At the time of the deal, Goodman complained that because there was no Variable Premium subsidy scheme in the UK, exporters there had an effective subsidy of $300 a tonne on beef exporters, thus enabling them to undercut Irish exporters.

In September 1983 Goodman won a $33m contract to supply beef to Iran.

Goodman praised then Minister for Agriculture Austin Deasy, whose visit to Tehran "greatly facilitated the securing of the new contract".

In December 1984 AIBP purchased the entire fresh meat division of Dalgety PLC, a publicly quoted UK group.

It included facilities in York, Blisworth, Wellingborough and Reading, as well as distribution depots in Jersey and Berkshire.

By this time turnover at Goodman had reached £300m a year.

The purchased was followed by the acquisition of the Waterford plant of Clover Meats (after that company's collapse) for around £2m in February 1985.

It includes the purchase of National Proteins, a by-products plant processing meat and bone meal from edible offal.

His companies attracted controversy during the 1991 Beef Tribunal, while a burger manufacturing facility, Silvercrest, was one of a number of high profile food manufacturing facilities which were involved in the 2013 European horse meat scandal.

An investigation by the Irish Government into the issue concluded that the company had never knowingly purchased meat containing equine DNA.

Goodman was born in County Louth.

He left school without finishing his Intermediate Certificate, and followed his father into the meat industry, starting with meat by-products and sheep.

He was "born to a well off family who had been in the meat business for six generations".

He lives with his wife Kitty at Castlebellingham, County Louth.

His brother Peter Goodman worked as deputy chairman of Goodman International and his other brother Michael was a farmer in County Louth.

They are no longer talking to one another.