The 100-acre Tralee Racecourse has been bought for €5m by local company the Ard-Rí Group, which has plans for a major manufacturing and distribution centre.
The Tralee homeware and stove company run by Paul and Neil Fitzgibbon has a workforce of about 680 employees serving more than 1,200 retailers across Ireland and Britain.
The 250,000sq foot development in the Ballybeggan Racecourse will make it Tralee’s largest building, company director Neil Fitzgibbon told Radio Kerry on Thursday. The company already has distribution centres in Cambridge in the UK, as well as in Dublin.
It had been trying to purchase Ballybeggan for some time. The company’s current centre in Curaheen outside Tralee was “bursting at the seams”, Mr Fitzgibbon said. “We were finally able to get it over the line,” he added.
Architect plans are already in train for the manufacturing and distribution buildings as well as staff housing.
Over the past three decades, the Fitzgibbon family has transformed Ard-Rí from a local stonemasonry craft producer into a thriving international powerhouse in the homeware industry. Founded by Noel Fitzgibbon in 1989, Ard-Rí Marble initially focused on handcrafted fireplaces.
Paul and Neil Fitzgibbon took the reins in 2007 and set their sights on expansion and innovation, streamlining supply chains, establishing a dedicated transport network, and broadening their product range to include doors, stoves, architrave and other products.
The company now operates two distribution centres in Britain, a distribution centre in Dublin, two factories in southern China, and a central hub in Tralee. By 2025, the Fitzgibbon brothers envision Ard-Rí becoming one of the leading manufacturers and distributors of homeware products in the EU.
The racecourse ceased operations 15 years ago. A dispute with the Kerry Coursing Club over the use of the historic grounds which reached the High Court was settled early last year.