Mayo entrepreneurs win innovation award at Westmeath event

Mayo man Alan Heaney, along with business partner Niall McGauran, have won the Innovation Award for their business, Efficient Farm Solutions Ltd., at the Westmeath Enterprise Awards which took place in the Annebrook House Hotel, Mullingar.

Efficient Farm Solutions Ltd (EFS Ltd) is a Westmeath Agri-tech company involved in the assembly, installation, commissioning, start up and service support of robotic milking, feeding and cleaning equipment.

Their customers are both fulltime and part-time Irish dairy and beef farmers who want to improve performance and save labour through the use of farm automation.

Alan Heaney, together with business partner Niall McGauran, have agricultural degrees from UCD, and MBA qualifications from TCD in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Management Institute, and collectively have over 25 years experience in export sales and global business from a young age.

In June 2012, they established EFS Ltd and have not looked back since. Alongside EFS Ltd, they also run another Agri-Tech business that specialises in animal health monitoring and are in the middle of developing some of their own tech devices to help farmers increase production, save time and reduce labour.