After steering the company radically away from its 70-year history in the sugar business to a future in chilled convenience foods, he now sees Greencore as a zippier number.

"Really quick. Really competent. Understated. Many people don't even know about it."

He expects that the company's transformation will be capped by a payment worth 124m to exit the sugar business, making up 90% of the available funds, with 10% going to growers. Dilger is more confident than ever that his assertion of this as an "entitlement", though hotly disputed by the IFA, will be vindicated. Italy has just employed the same formula in its own sugar industry.

Though the company leaves it with a 900acre property portfolio in Carlow and Mallow . . . valued by some observers this week at 200m . . . and a significant property in Littlehampton near Gatwick Airport in the UK, steering Greencore away from the sugar business has not been an easy process by any means, a topic about which Dilger is remarkably frank.

"Our current strategy and direction are born out of failure, because failure's okay, " he says. "Even in Ireland, it's okay to fail. You need to know that you've failed, and why you failed, and you need to do something about it, but it's okay to fail."

That failure was the first strategy pursued under Dilger, an attempt in the 1990s to try and manage the inevitable shift of the EU sugar regime by scaling up what he saw as Greencore's core competencies . . . managing a large-scale commodity business . . . and turning Greencore into a global agribusiness player. The low point of the strategy was certainly the gambit to enter the US sugar market by purchasing a 27% stake of Imperial Holly, a misadventure that cost the company more than 60m in the end.

"With the benefit of hindsight and only the benefit of hindsight that was not the correct strategy for this group.

"It took me three years trying to make progress in that area to realise there was nothing attractive, for a public company, in that route, " he admits. "It still would still make sense for private equity because of the cash flows."

Resistance to getting out of the sugar business altogether was strong, when . . . even now . . . there are those within the company who refuse to accept it.

"It appeared to me it had gotten into the DNA of the industry and the DNA of this company that sugar reform was never going to happen. It was so resistant to change for so long that it convinced itself this radical reform would never happen." Had it happened sooner, it might have meant the end of the business.

But Dilger is aggressively modest in disclaiming any credit for seeing that change was inevitable: "Claimed knowledge is worth f*** all. I wouldn't claim any credit. Any person remotely having common sense who sees their job as the management of risk . . . and that's what my job is . . . had to do something about that. You don't just sit there and try to maintain a cash flow which is that threatened.

You have to do something."

The next something was a bold move into the UK market, buying up the sauces and pickles concern, Hazlewood.

"Almost uniquely in the world, whereby really high quality fresh produce was being put on the shelves every day for mass consumers. Practically unique in the world.

Industry showing massive growth levels.

Consumers buying into it every day. We had actually been supplying many of those UK retailers, albeit with completely different product, ie, flour and sugar. It was one of the few available step changes we were capable of making. At least we were close to the customer."

The opportunity to buy a head start on that strategy . . . "more quickly than I would have liked" . . . came in 2000 when Hazlewood ran into financial difficulty and put itself on the block. After six months running the rule over the business and measuring the risks versus the rewards, Greencore made an offer.

"We were the second highest, " Dilger says.

"What you're doing is risking shareholder money. Those last few pennies for share is the juice for shareholders that you're spending.

The banks are fine down to a certain level.

Always be able to pay those back. We weren't willing to pay and effectively lost the deal."

But events intervened. Hazlewood's Selby factory . . . the largest maker of so-called 'ambient' sauces in the world, flooded in 2000 when a nearby river's banks burst.

"It was under 10 feet of water. We had to make a very fast risk assessment." The previous top bidder wasn't able to make up their minds fast enough, and Greencore wound up buying the company with 800m in debt.

It was a massive risk, but one which seems just about to have paid off.

The debt will have been paid down to just over 400m by the end of this year, despite the fact that the cash flows from the waning days of the sugar-processing business will drop from 25m to 10m and then to nothing as the final bags of sugar are sold from stocks.

Perhaps reacting to criticism that Greencore's shareprice has underperformed, Dilger passionately defends the fine line he had to walk in trying to convince of the need to turn the business around while being realistic about the political risk involved.

"They'd much prefer somebody there to talk up the value of the business. At the same time investors assert the responsibility to have managers speak with honesty and integrity. This is a difficult balance. I am absolutely certain it was not in our owners' interest for me to go around the world saying that sugar in Ireland was f***ed. And ultimately I work for them. I don't work for God . . . maybe in my other life . . . I work for them. I represent their interest, to talk about the risks; it's a really difficult balance.

"So it was also difficult to talk with the passion one felt inside about transformation of the business. I felt the burning platform singeing the hairs on my arse. But it wasn't in my owners' interest to tell them about the heat."

When the alternative outcome was that the timing of sugar reform would mean the winding up of Greencore, many observers would count survival and transformation as a major success. Dilger knows that he must deliver a greater value for the business.

"I want to create significant wealth for those people who have risked their money with us, " he says. "We'll only know then whether it's been successful. I'm afraid, we haven't done miserably . . . but we haven't created major wealth for the people whose equity has supported our transformation. But we will."

Achieving that goal will mean capitalising on the property portfolio. There is significant soil remediation work to be done in Carlow and Mallow, to get rid of 70 years' worth of effluent following the 84% of the beets that didn't leave Greencore's plants as sugar. But Dilger says they won't be selling the sites off, but rather become a developer.

It will also mean taking the company into new markets. "There are other European and other developed markets including the United States where vast segments of the community are not serviced in the way the UK markets have been by high-quality chilled foods choice for consumers.

"We are carefully evaluating that opportunity, " he adds. Asked whether he might be partnering with a UK retailer to enter the US . . . Tesco is planning to enter the California market . . . he maintains a stony silence. But a move to the US, either in California or the New York metro area, seems likely.

When he eventually does leave Greencore . . . a subject on which he will not be drawn . . . he says he wants it to be a Mercedes 500, but with the right engine. "The best car in the world, " he says. And also the one he happens to drive himself.