Until 2008, CDE Global's success mirrored that of the then- booming construction industry. Delivering its equipment to customer sites was an understandable priority, with little time to think about more efficient ways to do it.

“This was something we struggled with in the boom, because you couldn’t get equipment out the door fast enough,” says managing director Brendan McGurgan.

“There was such a volume of work, we could turn a blind eye to things. Our execution on project delivery wasn’t as effective as it could have been.”

That all changed as the construction sector caved in. The Cookstown-based maker of washing equipment for quarries was faced with a “burning platform”, in McGurgan’s words, as revenues dropped by half.

He had joined CDE in 2003 as finance director and was appointed managing director in 2007, just before the crash. “I remember bringing everyone into the boardroom – everyone fit into the boardroom at the time – and communicating very openly about the situation we were facing. Everybody was hearing this on the news every day, so they wanted to know how safe their own jobs were.

“It was a case of everyone at that point buying into a survival strategy, accepting there would be some sacrifice, rolling their sleeves up and doing what had to be done,” he says.

Rather than cutting the team back during the depths of the recession, CDE gave its employees projects to reduce their overheads by a targeted amount every month. Meeting those goals meant the company was able to secure most, although not all, of the jobs.

“We needed to reduce overheads to give ourselves the best chance of survival,” McGurgan adds. “We also recognised that we also had some significant talent within the team and we didn’t want to lose the talent.”

A big step in the survival plan was to change how the company executed projects, focusing on being on time and under budget. “It has helped the quality of what we deliver to meet the delivery milestones and the adherence to costs,” he says.

The next target was product development. Before the recession, CDE heavily emphasised its ability to provide bespoke machines for projects. The build-to-order philosophy remains, but it opted to turn its machines into a smaller, modular building blocks that could be shipped by container and built at project sites.

“In order to export and reach a wider audience with less finance available to them than pre-recession, we had to create a product set that met different market needs at lower volumes and a lower ticket price. We invested more in product development during the recession than at any time in our history.

“We had been so busy delivering customer orders that we didn’t have time to think what our product set would look like in four or five years. Now, we’ve created a function that has no other remit than new product development and existing product refinement.”

Now, the company has internal targets for a certain percentage of revenues to be generated by new products that have been developed within the past three years.

A more diversified business has also enabled CDE to reach new sectors like environmental, mining, demolition waste- recycling and industrial sand, which includes washing silica sand for glass-bottle making.

Seven years ago, CDE existed month to month. Now, planning for the future has become ingrained into its culture.

In October, 15 of the leadership team went to Stuttgart to finalise a five-year strategy. It was the culmination of nine months of planning that involved taking feedback from every company employee.

CDE is aiming high. “Our vision is to be the number one wet processing company in every country in the world,” McGurgan says. Achieving this goal involves “eating the elephant piece by piece”. In practice, that means dividing the world into geographical regions and building sales and marketing teams in each one.

North America is a newly established territory for CDE. It also has a presence in Australia, Latin America, Europe and Russia, Britain and Ireland and sub-Saharan Africa. The company serves the Far East through CDE Asia, a company it set up in India.

“The recession forced us to look at export markets and widen our export reach, which was mitigating the risk of being in one country and one sector, to become less exposed. That strategy has not only mitigated risk but has given us a fantastic platform to grow the company.”

From its “lowest ebb” in 2009, group revenue has grown by almost five times. Staff numbers have increased by a similar scale from fewer than 50 people in 2008.

McGurgan admits he hardly recognises the company now. “Every year the company changes again. We’re constantly developing new markets and new sectors and developing new products. We’re creating new roles that I didn’t know existed four or five years ago.”