Yet there is another commercial Ireland now very much in the ascendant. It is a far cry from Ireland’s still-significant traditional industries. It is the result of the country’s fully-fledged knowledge economy, which was founded on another of Ireland’s underlying strengths: its education system.

The delegation currently visiting Saudi Arabia reflects the intellectual and physical manifestations of that education system. Colleges are well represented, as are innovative software and management companies and manufacturers that have used the results of Ireland’s education system and the knowledge economy to develop new products and add value to familiar ones.

Acoustic wallboards are possibly the least likely products to enthuse the casual listener. Ten minutes with the energetic Anthony Denby, managing director of Woodfit, and the subject reveals itself as intensely interesting and one that with the application of research generates a product that has found a niche market.

“We can’t compete with the Chinese on price, but we produce acoustic panels that are very much better in quality for a price that our clients are happy with,” said Denby, effectively outlining the whole strategy for Ireland’s emerging products: Quality driven by science that ends up as competitive products.

Woodfit tested the idea that quality, once understood, was a positive selling point in a world fixated mostly on price. Three apparently similar panels made from MDF board from Ireland, Spain and China went through the machining and production process into acoustic panels. Presented to the client as finished items without costs, he selected the Irish-sourced panel on weight, finish and fire-retardant properties. 

Denby said the qualities of the MDF depended on how it was made. The MDF the Irish used was made from stripped wood, the Spanish from a combination of wood and tree bark and the Chinese from “goodness knows what. When we machined it, it fell apart.”

The added value of the Woodfit product was the science that went into the physical design of the panels, the placement of cavities and absorbent materials to add to the acoustic properties and the involvement of the sound engineering team from the beginning of a building project.

Ireland also has a reputation for the quality of its food. Large-scale production that ensures the quality and purity of comestibles has its own challenges, particularly in the dairy and pharmaceutical areas. They overlap in the baby formula area and few have more experience in the design, planning and operation of clean-room construction essential for foodstuff production than the PM group based in Athlone.

The important area was not just the design and construction of the plant but particularly how the food products were handled, processed and the quality of the clean room environment. 

“You need to set up a protocol in the factory to control this,” said Eyre Tarrant, director.

The company already has designed facilities and processes that are under construction for the dairy industry in Saudi Arabia. The application of that knowledge involves building relationships with the processing plant design and construction team. 

Niamh Milne, marketing manager, noted that PM is in the process of tendering for the refurbishment of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority in Riyadh. 

There are, according to Abdulaziz Aldriss, the Saudi Ambassador to Ireland, over 120 Irish companies operating in the Kingdom. They are achieving average year-on-year increases in sales of 20 percent. 

“There is a demand for technology-based products in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We would also like a transfer of technology and expertise to the Kingdom.”

In 2009, the trade relationship between the two countries was heavily biased in favour of physical products, particularly food, pharmaceutical and assorted chemical products. The first half of 2010 saw total exports from Ireland, with a population smaller than Riyadh, increase from by 32 percent from SR1.07 billion ($286 million) to SR1.42 billion ($379 million).

Perhaps the least visible of all exports is in the realm of computer software. Ireland has made itself home over the recent to numerous software companies from the US and Europe but the industry was alive and well two decades ago.

Softex specializes in telephone monitoring and usage analysis software and have been in the field for 21 years, 15 of those have seen them exporting into Saudi Arabia. CEO Ian Sparling has an infectious good-humoured enthusiasm about his company and its products that belies the intensity of his determination to stay one step ahead of the competition.

His latest development is a carrier-based software solution that allows telephone carriers to open up the monitoring and analysis software to thousands of business enterprise customers. 

“All our current business growth is from selling solution platforms to mobile carriers such as BT and Telefonica, ” he said.   Mobile carriers are under huge competitive pressure from each other and not least from new entrants to the market such as Google.

The trick, says Sparling, is to identify a coming need, develop a solution and get it out into the marketplace.  

“In response to this, we have developed a platform that will enable the carriers to bring a better mobile experience to their enterprise base through transparency for the enterprise as to what it is actually buying and consuming,” said Sparling.

That is predictive niche marketing in a nutshell. And it is exactly this that Ireland is developing and bringing to the Kingdom on its current trade

mission.