The 11th-hour Travenol rescue

County View
John Healy

It was more of a homecoming than a holiday trip when Doug Scott visited Castlebar a few weeks ago. Fifty years earlier, the then young American was the advance pioneer sent to Ireland to lay the foundation of Travenol, hailed as a jewel in the crown of the country’s campaign to attract foreign direct investment.
When Travenol (today known as Baxter) commenced production in 1972, it was meant to herald a new dawn for employment in the county town and across Mayo. Subsidiary plants were opened in Belmullet and Swinford, while employment at Castlebar soared to over 700. By the time Doug Scott returned to the US eight years later, the future seemed secure beyond question.
He could hardly have envisaged the stormy seas and turbulent weather that would threaten to smash the new company onto the rocks within a few short years. But by the early 1980s, storm clouds were gathering. A cutback in health spending by national governments meant that the market for medical devices was far less buoyant than it had been. Keen competition from other manufacturing plants worldwide was leading, many noticed with alarm, to production being stockpiled in Castlebar. Heavy hints of rationalisation and consolidation were in the air; uncertainty was setting in.
And then came the dreaded news. As the 700 employees returned from the Christmas break in the first days of 1985, they were informed, by letter, that the board of Travenol, back in Illinois, had decided to close the Castlebar plant. Four hundred jobs would be gone by that October, the remainder phased out a year later. Travenol would repay to the IDA (Industrial Development Authority) the £3 million in grant aid it had received on first locating in Mayo, and that would be the end.
The shock news came as a hammer blow both locally and nationally. Travenol had become a mainstay of the local economy. A host of smaller service industries had been set up and thrived in its slipstream. Nationally, the closure would be a huge setback to Ireland’s claim to be an ideal location for overseas companies.
Over the following months, all out efforts were made to persuade the company to change its mind. But the response was stark; the board room decision in Illinois had not been made lightly and, once made, there would be no turning back. But Castlebar had not given up completely. Led by the Castlebar Community Development Association, and backed by every shade of statutory, political, religious and community interest, the lobbying went on. More visits to the American headquarters, persuasive plans put forward by the Castlebar plant management, high level pleadings from the IDA and national political leaders, even an appeal to President Ronald Reagan, who had visited Mayo a year earlier, all proved fruitless.
And then, apparently out of the blue, came an extraordinary reversal of fortune. In June 1987 came the announcement from Illinois that hearts and minds had been changed. Travenol would, after all, remain in operation in Castlebar. It was an unprecedented turn of events. Perseverance had paid off. A minor miracle had been achieved. It was time for jubilation.
A significant factor in the u-turn was said to have been the impressive continued loyalty of the Castlebar staff even as the axe of closure hung above their heads. It had not gone unobserved in the US that, in the preceding year, the Castlebar plant had won three out of the seven performance awards competed for annually among the Travenol plants across Europe.
For Doug Scott’s return visit to Castlebar, the wheel had come full circle, and one of the greatest reprieves in business history was now no more than a footnote in the archives.