The Visy cardboard box manufacturing and recycling empire has made Anthony Pratt Australia’s richest person.
He topped the Financial Review Rich List with $12.60 billion, the largest amount of wealth for a single person in Australia’s history.
“Money is a great scoreboard of success, or one of them,” Pratt told The Australian Financial Review.
“It’s a great honour and I feel very fortunate that I’m in a position that I can build a business.”
The 57-year-old was second on the Rich List in 2016 behind Sydney property developer Harry Triguboff.
He was last in first place on the list of Australia’s 200 wealthiest people in 2009, just months after his father, Richard Pratt, died.
“Pratt’s Visy cardboard box manufacturing and recycling business dominates Australia, but his rising wealth is mainly due to the huge growth of Pratt Industries in the US,” says AFR.
“The business has grown rapidly in the past decade thanks to a huge rise in sales of recycled cardboard boxes and contracts with big American companies such as Amazon and Home Depot, which sells one million Pratt-made packing and storage boxes each week.”
