Jennifer's buzz about beeswax food wraps!

Concerns over the impact of plastic on our environment was the catalyst for a young Offaly mother to set up her own company manufacturing reusable food wraps made from beeswax!

Jennifer Doyle, who lives in Ballycommon, outside Tullamore with her husband, Joe, and two children, Jane (6) and Matthew (who is nearly 5) describes herself as “a country girl at heart” and says it was very important for her to set up a business which was doing “something positive” for the environment.

As a beekeeper herself – she has one hive of bees – the young mother-of-two was already familiar with beeswax and its many uses before she began experimenting with the idea of using beeswax as the main ingredient in reusable food wraps.

“I did a lot of research on the wraps at my own kitchen table,” she laughs. “And I also did a entrepreneur development programme in Athlone Institute of Technology called 'New Frontiers' which helped me with the business end of things, so I set up Millbee in April of this year, and thankfully I have been making steady progress ever since.”

Jennifer was trying to come up with a name for her new company, and had planned to use the word 'míl” which is the Irish name for honey but when she tried to register the url she found that she couldn't use the fada!

“I then decided to use the word 'mill' as it has a crafty ring to it, and I combined it with bee – for the beeswax – and came up with the word 'millbee' so that was it,” she says, adding that craft has always been one of her great passions.

“I think I take my love of all things crafty from my late Granny, Mary Langton, who was brilliant at things like patchwork and crochet,” says Jennifer. “She had brilliant hands and I like to think I have inherited some of her talents.”

The daughter of Dolores (nee Langton) and the late Gerry Dillon, Jennifer Doyle's roots are in Killeigh, where she has many relations, but she adores where she lives in Ballycommon as she is surrounded by a “wonderful community of beekeepers” and loves the rural way of life.

Having graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology in 2007 with a Degree in Interior and Furniture Design, Jennifer worked for a number of years in commercial interior design, and it was when her two children were born that she began to think of the type of environment that her children will inherit in the future.

“Like everyone else, I suppose I just became more environmentally conscious and I was always struck by the amount of plastic being used in every house, and the amount of clingfilm we were all using, so I set about researching alternatives to clingfilm, and that research led me in the direction of beeswax wraps.

Having already manufactured beeswax candles, Jennifer approached a local beekeeper, Niall O'Reilly, who has 15 hives, with a view to securing enough beeswax to start making her reusable beeswax wraps and he came on board with the project.

At the moment, the wraps are handmade by Jennifer (with a lot of input from her mother, Dolores, she admits) at her kitchen table in Ballycommon and she sells them both online and at local markets, including at the weekly Tullamore Food Market in Kilcruttin, where she has a stall.

However, as the company grows and expands, she says she is hoping to be in a position to recruit some staff which will allow her to concentrate on sales and marketing.

“I would be hoping to scale up the business in the coming months, and I am also researching other products such as sustainable kitchenware,” she says “so I intend to take it step by step and enjoy the exciting journey.”
The four ingredients used to make the beeswax wraps are organic cotton, beeswax, jojoba oil and resin. “There are loads of people out there who are sick of using clingfilm and want to find a more sustainable alternative, and the Millbee reusable food wraps are that alternative,” she says.

The wraps are washable, reusable and compostable and each wrap lasts for approximately six months.

“Their main use is to wrap food, or to cover leftover food, and after use you simply wipe the wrap with a sponge or cloth and a mild detergent, rinse it and leave it to dry before using it all over again, so it is a fantastic alternative to clingfilm.”

Jennifer Doyle's company is only the second company of its kind in Ireland making reusable food wraps, and already she has 30 stockists across the country, including King Oak and Mother Earth in Tullamore.

She has also been nominated in two categories (social sustainability and retail) in the prestigious Ireland Start-Up Awards 2019, and was also shortlisted for the Irish Country Magazine Irish Made Awards.

While she is not naive enough to believe that Millbee will result in the obliteration of clingfilm. Jennifer Doyle points out that Ireland is one of the biggest contributors to plastic pollution in Europe and everyone will have to change their habits going forward.

“Being sustainable is a journey, and I am asking people to join me on that journey towards using less plastic...If we all make just one small change then everyone will benefit, and most especially our children.”

Anyone wishing to learn more about Millbee products or to get in touch can e-mail Jennifer Doyle at: info@millbee.com or visit her website: www.millbee.com