Ensuring your baby stays healthy and free from any preventable illnesses is every mother’s number one priority.

Yet rarely does a company specialise purely in doing just that. Shasta Limited and in particular its founder and director in Chief Ann Marie Durkin is not your ordinary, run of the mill enterprise however.

A mother of three small children herself, Ann Marie is not perhaps your quintessential high flying tycoon either. In fact had it not been for her experience as a young mother, her steadily growing Shasta brand and more importantly her latest invention may never have seen the light of day.

“It was when I was having my first son about three years ago,” Ann Marie recalls. “I went looking for a (baby) soother but when I did I was told to sterilize it. I just thought to myself ‘Oh God’ and went to do some research to see if there was a sterilized one on the market.”

There wasn’t. After getting over her initial shock, Ann Marie mulled over whether to take advantage of what appeared to be a gaping hole in the industry. A matter of months later, her unique and more importantly the world’s first pre-sterilized soother was unveiled.

The rest as they say is history. Two and a half years and over 500 pharmacies later the Steri-Soother has achieved global recognition so much so Ann Marie has nailed down exclusive distribution rights to Iran and the Far East.

“It just went down so well. The Midlands and West Enterprise Programme (MWEP) in Athlone and the support we got from Enterprise Ireland allowed us to use, access knowledge and make a prototype,” she explains.

With her craving to bring the Steri-Soother to market, Ann Marie set about cashing in on her new found success even further. Her desire and canny business approach led her to examine the practicalities behind her second baby soother-the Steri Orb.

A portable, easy to carry utensil, the Steri-Orb is being billed as a ‘must have’ item for all mothers thanks to its unrivalled success rate in killing bacteria that are found on baby soothers.

It’s fetching space-age design is equally novel, but as Ann Marie explains the Steri-Orb took its time to get off the ground.

“It has taken me about two years to develop and patent the bottle sterilizer. While I was patenting that I saw that a company in Australia was doing a lot of ultra violet (UV) testing so I contacted them. I had a patent for the bottle sterilizer and they had a patent for a soother sterilizer and we met up in Germany,” she said.

Those discussions proved extremely beneficial. And perhaps more pertinently it allowed her to release the product under the Shasta name.

Many months laterust like the original Steri soother, Ann Marie, who conducted much of her research and development at Athlone’s Institute of Technology, is very much looking forward to the steri-orb’s launch.

“It’s a great thing to have if you are on the go and is handy to transport as well,” she adds
Her next aim is to bring the product nationwide and more importantly onto the shelves of big name retailers.

“That is the issue at the moment,” she reflects. “No matter how well I do it isn’t enough to just concentrate on pharmacies. I need to get it into the the multiple chains like the Tescos and Mothercare.”

Her drive to succeed is already paying dividends with Dunnes Stores in Dublin agreeing to take the Steri-Orb on a trial basis. But that’s not all. The Granard based entrepreneur is currently enrolled on a lucrative mentoring programme called ‘Going for Growth’ whose leading tutors include household names such Rita Shah and Ballinalee recruitment guru Ann Heraty.

For the moment however, all thoughts are focused squarely on her latest invention-the Steri-Orb. “It’s really only a week and-a-half old but everything is going great at the moment. I am really happy.”

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