exida, the functional safety, industrial cybersecurity, and alarm management organisation, has announced that it has chosen Shannon as the location of a European Centre of Excellence, creating 25 roles over the next five years. 

Certification, services, assessments

exida provides certification, services, assessments, and tools to automation, automotive, robotics, and machinery equipment manufacturers as well as pharmaceutical, chemical, petro-chemical, oil and gas, subsea, metals and mining, pulp and paper, and power utilities customers.

“We are very excited to launch exida IRL to provide local support for our European customers and expand exida’s technical capabilities. There were several factors that led to choosing Ireland for this expansion including; proximity to European customers, strong local talent pool to recruit from, support from IDA Ireland, and the country’s proven track record for foreign direct investment”, said Chris O’Brien, CEO of exida.

“Initial hiring is already completed for the Shannon office and our plans are to bring the total staff count up to 25 in the next three to five years. This staff will allow us to expand our software development capability and resource EU projects”, said Iwan van Beurden, director of exida IRL. 

“The process of setting up a new office completely virtually was quite smooth, IDA Ireland was there to help and provided excellent support through many net meetings”.

Highly specialist field

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar said: “I warmly welcome exida’s decision to locate its new Centre of Excellence in Shannon. This will bring 25 highly skilled jobs to the midwest over the next three to five years. exida is a world leader in a highly specialist field and it will be a welcome addition to the business ecosystem in the region.”

IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan said “Due to travel restrictions imposed following the global outbreak of COVID-19, the US-based team at exida experienced Shannon and the midwest’s unique value proposition and pro-business environment, through IDA Ireland’s Remote Site Visit hub. I wish to congratulate the team at exida on today’s announcement and assure them of IDA Ireland’s continued support.”

This project is supported by the government through IDA Ireland.