It was bought by Deloitte in 2017 and Aherne spent a couple of years with the new entity before moving on to Fexco.
In the last couple of years, we’ve doubled down on innovation and we have created very much a growth mindset with a future focus That innovation engine that Fexco has created extends beyond its own company interest. Fexco is one of the partners in RDI Hub in Kerry, an innovation centre that opened in 2020.
“What we’ve done is we’ve created an innovation engine in Fexco. It does not just benefit Fexco, it’s also for our partners,” says Aherne. “We’ve created this engine that harnesses all the assets and capabilities that Fexco has, and we do that to create new value. Those assets would include a sizeable innovation team; they do the ideation and the prototyping and the validation.
“We have this end-to-end services platform which very few of other companies have. It’s akin to a global player, but it’s much more accessible,” says Aherne. “We’re family run, we can make fast decisions, the executives are very close and they’re all very local. That’s something that means we can then corral all our resources to drive the right impact for our partners. It’s quite an unusual set-up. It’s not something that I’ve come across before elsewhere.