Anthony Pratt will host US president Donald Trump and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison at a new Pratt Industries paper recycling plant in Ohio next week.
The new $400m plant opens almost 30 years after Anthony Pratt successfully launched the US version of the Visy business founded by his father, cardboard king Richard Pratt.
Construction started in March last year and the paper mill is expected to come online in October, with corrugated box production beginning in January. Pratt Industries is now operating plants in half of the states in the US, with revenue topping US$3bn and growing.
In a statement, the White House said the visit by Trump and Morrison would “demonstrate the strong trade and investment relationship between the US and Australia, and president Trump’s successful efforts to restore the US as the world’s leading destination for foreign direct investment”.
Pratt is a well known Trump supporter, one of the few who backed his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election, and has extensive connections with US Republicans. The vice-president Mike Pence opened another of Pratt's plants, in 2016.
The US business has made Richard Pratt Australia's richest person: he topped the AFR rich list for the third year running in July, when he was worth $15.57bn, which is a substantial improvement on last year's $12.9bn. It comes, said the AFR, off the back of Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts, instant investment write-offs, and an uplift across the sector.
