The region consists of counties Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, which border county Dublin. The Mid-East is a highly attractive investment location, and hosts many significant investment projects in life sciences, technology, international financial services and advanced manufacturing.
Across the three counties, IDA Ireland’s client base of over 85 companies employs more than 20,000 people. Notable employers include Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Leixlip (Kildare), Pfizer and Keurig Dr Pepper in Newbridge (Kildare), MSD in Dunboyne, Utmost International and Unilin Insulation (formerly Xtratherm) in Navan, county Meath, as well as Takeda, Tcoag, Oriflame and Megazyme. Key inward investment projects in Wicklow are Servier, the French pharmaceutical company that employs more than 500 people in Arklow, along with Elavon and Merck.
County Wicklow is strong in the TV, animation, and film sector. Ashford and Ardmore Studios and the Clermont Screen Hub have helped to produce movies and shows like Wednesday, Vikings, Battle at Big Rock, Westerlies, Cocaine Bear and Fate: The Winx Saga. As well as studio and location facilities, talent features strongly as an attraction, as production companies can source skilled local people to work on the production crews.
Access to talent
People are a key part of what the Mid-East can offer. Clients tell us all the time that availability and access to talent is a deciding factor when choosing where to locate. Fortunately, the Mid-East is extremely well served from this perspective. Companies that locate here benefit from a population of almost 1.3 million people living within 40 minutes’ drive of most parts of the region. This gives new investors confidence, when they see peer companies that have already chosen the region and they know they too can access the skills they need to scale quickly.
Thanks to the interconnected motorway network, employers can also attract talent through the ‘reverse commute’ effect, where people travelling to work avoid traffic by going in the opposite direction to built-up urban areas. The region’s attractiveness will increase further with the planned expansion of the suburban rail line, due for 2026. Many companies, particularly those that export, have benefited from the region’s closeness to both Dublin Airport and Dublin Port.
Maynooth University is arguably one of the region’s strongest assets: it’s Ireland’s fastest growing university and not only produces graduates with skills that multinationals need, it also has a growing reputation for its research, with multiple centres focused on various areas including AI, robotics and drone technology, data analytics, and more.
A flagship investment
When it comes to investors that have arrived and stayed in the region, no mention of the Mid-East is complete without Intel, one of the flagship multinational investment projects in Ireland’s history. The chip manufacturer has invested €30 billion in Ireland since 1989, when it chose to locate its European headquarters in Leixlip. Today, the campus is one of the largest semiconductor production hubs in the world and a strategic centre for the company where close to 5,000 people work. The company has continued to reinvest in its site in county Kildare, culminating in Fab 34, one of the largest and most advanced semiconductor operations in Europe. At €17 billion, this is the largest private investment in the history of the Irish State, and a major vote of confidence in Ireland, and in the Mid-East region, by Intel.
The company’s continued presence has also had a halo effect, leading to sub-suppliers and providers of raw materials, parts or packaging to locate in the surrounding area. In Intel’s case, examples of this are specialised technology providers Nikon and Fanuc Robotics. There’s a similar effect when a large pharmaceutical or manufacturing company sets up.
A more recent arrival to the region is INIT, a supplier of integrated planning, dispatching, telematics and ticketing systems for buses and trains. Although many multinationals coming to Ireland have historically been from North America, INIT’s story is somewhat unusual. The Irish office was the company’s first software development centre outside its home country of Germany. INIT recently expanded its team in Ireland and specifically referred to the availability of highly skilled software developers.
INIT operates from Maynooth Business Campus, a short distance down the road from Intel’s facility. The same location also serves as the base for other IDA Ireland clients Applied Materials, FANUC and Tokyo Electron.
A focus on sustainability
As well as skills, the Mid-East is building a reputation for sustainability. Keurig Dr Pepper’s announcement in 2024 shows this in action. It is investing €6.44 million in an extensive sustainability project at its international operations hub in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, implementing several energy saving initiatives including installing heat pumps. When construction is complete, the power for the beverage production site will come from 100% renewable electricity, reducing an estimated 1,600 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.The region is also actively planning to tap into the possibilities of offshore wind. The Arklow Bank Wind Park 2 project, which is under development and anticipated to be generating electricity by the end of the decade, will be located off the county Wicklow coast. The first wind park project consisted of seven turbines and was built in 2003-04 to showcase the wind generation technology. It’s expected that the next phase of the project will have a maximum export capacity of up to 800MW.
Close support from IDA Ireland
Multinationals that set up in the Mid-East can be assured of close support from IDA Ireland throughout the setup process and ongoing operations. A standout feature of how IDA Ireland engages with client companies is the relationship model: we take the time to develop an ongoing partnership with companies that invest in Ireland. Our team has dedicated sectoral experts who are assigned to each company and can act as a conduit to the many concierge services we provide. These range from ‘soft’ supports like introductions to peers at client companies that already have set up here, or local stakeholders in the community who can help to smooth the path to a rapid scaling up, or education providers to discuss ways of collaborating, to the various financial supports available for in-company initiatives ranging from digitalisation to upskilling to sustainability projects.
As part of this support, we can connect clients with flexible office space at various points throughout the region that’s primed for companies that need to land quickly and scale up fast. IDA Ireland also owns land banks around the region at Littleconnell, Newbridge, Navan and Arklow, that are geared towards high-end manufacturing. Depending on the specific project, we also partner with private sector operators to develop sites suited to a specific client’s requirements.
One such site is Kildare Innovation Campus. Formerly a HP printer facility, it’s now been transformed into a modern multi-purpose business hub with multiple buildings in an area of more than 150,000 sq m. It’s suitable for a range of activities, from small-team R&D to scaling up a manufacturing facility. The site is currently the base for several companies including MGS, Nikon, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and DXC Technology.
From skills and sustainability to a supportive partner for the investment journey, the Mid-East provides the perfect platform for multinationals to start and scale their international operations from Ireland.