*Proposed finishes to Block Y and Z in the Shannon Airport Business Park.
SHANNON’s commercial potential is endless with over 135 acres available for development in the town’s biggest business park.
Already boasting the highest concentration of FDI companies outside of Dublin, the 600-acre Shannon Airport Business Park includes over 300 buildings offering two million square feet of commercial space, making it one of Ireland’s largest multi-sectoral business parks.
Ground has been broken on the next stage of development in the Business Park. Blocks Y and Z are 100,000 square feet over two blocks, 65,000 square feet and a 35,000 square feet development in Shannon Business Park West which signals a €14m investment.
Commercial Director of The Shannon Airport Group, Vanessa McTigue confirmed to The Clare Echo there has already been strong interest in both blocks. “There’s really good interest in those units because there’s very few developments going on regionally at the moment bar ourselves because it has got so expensive to develop, we’re one of the few companies developing speculatively, if somebody comes and they’re looking for space we generally have something readily available for them or if not readily available then it is in the pipeline over the next few months. Blocks Y and Z will be ready at the end of this year, there’s good demand for those spaces already”.
She added, “The real win would be to have them pre-let before we have the buildings completed, we’d be confident to be in a position to have them let by the end of this year or Q1 of 2027, there is good interest so I’d be confident we would hit that target”.
Over the last eighteen months, Block S and Block R were let to Frontier Scientific Solutions and Embryonics respectively. Frontier are a US company involved in cold-storage distribution of pharmaceutical products while Embryonics are Galway based “involved in developing the internet in space,” she outlined. Shannon was identified by Frontier as a good place to do business due to the strength of the pharmaceutical industry in Galway, Limerick and Cork, “on a more macro-level, we’re the only English speaking country in the EU now, companies gravitate towards that and it was really important for the US market, we’ve flights between Shannon and North Carolina supporting the pharmaceutical sector”.
Building an average of 100 to 150,000 square feet of multi-sector industrial space each year is the aim of the Shannon Airport Group. “The buildings we’re developing are modern, very energy efficient, we develop the space and it is so flexible that it is suitable for any sector to come to Shannon, the clients can do the fitout to their own operational requirements,” Vanessa stated. She added, “We’ve 98 percent occupancy in our business park, the team is working very well with a solid strategy in terms of what is happening in Shannon and that is a good barometer for the region’s economic strength”.
Within Shannon Airport Business Park East is where the most of the undeveloped land is, she noted. “We’ve plenty of land left,” Vanessa stated. “We’ve about 135 acres over in our East Park and over a million square feet of development so we’re a long way away from being at capacity at potential development, there’s still huge opportunity and growth potential for Shannon”.
Ennis native Vanessa explained that Shannon Airport’s international connectivity “is a big plus” when pitching to prospective businesses. “Shannon has been synonymous with innovation since day one, the first free trade zone, the first duty free in an airport, people gravitate to the innovation within Shannon, people might think sharing of information is odd in a competitive environment but within the aviation cluster they very much see it as a way to share learning, the emerald aero cluster has members in Shannon and they work together in bidding for larger pieces of business and have been very successful in that. The diversification of sectors within the business park is really positive, historically there would have been a lot of aviation companies due to the link with the airport, we now have 300 companies and about 10,000 employees, a third of those are aviation related so two thirds of the companies are from other sectors like life sciences, space, logistics, automotive”.
Comparisons between the hassle-free experience at Shannon Airport and setting up a base in the Free Zone are made by McTigue, “We say Shannon Airport is very easy to fly through but when it comes to setting up business in Shannon, it is a very easy place to come and meet us, we understand what clients’ requirements are and we can develop a property solution based on their requirements”.
This year, there are forty routes from Shannon Airport, the largest network in seventeen years, the extra routes will enable further business, she predicted. “We’ve a lot of new routes announced in the airport, one key one from the business perspective is Frankfurt starting at the end of April with Discovery Airlines, the hub connectivity will support a lot of onward traffic to sixty destinations from Frankfurt, people will be able to go on a leisure or business break in Asia from Shannon to Frankfurt and onwards, it is a very positive route. On other route announcements, we’ve new routes for Rome, extensions for Madrid, Warsaw and Poznan”.
An investment of €40m is planned for Shannon Airport this year including the redevelopment of the terminal building. There is also a strong focus on maximising a return from the Ryder Cup, Irish Open and Walker Cup over the next seventeen months. “We’ll be seeing a lot of improvements in the passenger experience as people go through the airport over the next fifteen months. We’re very conscious of all the golf going to the region over the next eighteen months, we’ve the Irish Open and the Walker Cup this year and then the big one, the Ryder Cup in September 2027, we’re seeing Shannon as the gateway to golf, we’re working with the Ryder Cup team and Tourism Ireland on that messaging, it is really key that the message gets out internationally, Shannon is the place to fly to and we’ve super connectivity and our trans-Atlantic routes are very important”.
According to Vanessa, Shannon Chamber “have been the driving force” for a lot of what is going on in Shannon with the majority of the clients in the Business Park attached to the Chamber. “Helen (Downes) is a super advocate for Shannon as an area and place to do business, she is constantly championing what we’re doing in Shannon, she’s a voice for us in Shannon Airport but she’s a voice for all the businesses in Shannon. She is a real champion for Shannon but for the innovation and talent that is here in Shannon, she is a fantastic advocate for everything good about Shannon”.
Breaking away from the daa has enabled Shannon to place a stronger focus on its property portfolio, the chartered accountant maintained. “Over ten years ago there was a focus on the potential that the property portfolio could add to the region for economic development, there was a plan put in place back in 2014 that investment was required in the Business Park, that became very evident in 2017, 2018 and 2019 when Jaguar came on board. It is really positive to see a global player like Edwards Lifesciences go into a refurbished building, it gave us confidence to look at refurbishment as opposed to demolition”.
“If you drive through you can see how Ei Electronics and other companies have reinvested in their properties to compliment what the Shannon Airport Group has done in terms of investment. It is great when we bring new clients to Shannon, they are very impressed. When someone sees a big hitter like Edwards or Jaguar, they think Shannon is a really good place to do business. Access to resources is key for Shannon and it goes back to the talent pool coming out from universities in Limerick, Shannon and Cork, there’s about 30,000 graduates coming out every year from Limerick, companies know there is highly skilled graduates and access to resources. We’ve a motorway on our doorstep so you can get talent from Galway down in fifty minutes and straight out from Limerick, we’ve the trans-atlantic or European connectivity then from the Airport. The development plan of reinvesting in the Park, developing and refurbishing properties as we need to is ongoing. The most greenfield sites we have are in Shannon Business Park East,” she continued.
