Richest 250: Anthony Pratt tops Victoria’s richest people list in 2021
One of Victoria’s richest people made his fortune by selling plumbing supplies. Now he’s worth $6.6b. See the full list of Victoria’s richest people here.
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Meet Victoria’s richest people. Worth billions and living in homes the rest of us can only dream of, the Richest 250 list dives into their lives to find the secret to their success.
ANTHONY PRATT
Pizza boxes and beer bottles fuelled a record year for billionaire cardboard box king Anthony Pratt, and has made him the richest Victorian.
Pratt owns the cardboard box maker and recycling giant Visy in Australia with his sisters Fiona Geminder and Heloise Waislitz, and has sole ownership of Pratt Industries in the US.
He and his family’s wealth reaches a record $21.28bn on the 2021 edition of The List - Australia’s Richest 250, published Saturday in The Weekend Australian in a special edition magazine.
Visy dominates the Australian market and makes plenty of pizza boxes and beer bottles, which have been shipped to homes at record rates during COVID-19.
Pratt also recently made a $2bn pledge to expand Visy over the next decade, creating hundreds of green manufacturing jobs. The pledge adds to the $1bn deal he clinched late last year to purchase the Australasian assets of glassmaker Owens-Illinois, which gives Visy a 90 per cent share of the beer bottle manufacturing market.
The overall wealth of Australia’s richest 250 individuals and family groups rose from $377 billion this time last year to $470 billion today.
In the ultra-elite top five, who are all worth more than $20 billion, the biggest slip was Pratt and family.
It was an excellent year for cardboard (remember all those boxes the postie was slinging over your front fence?), which meant the Pratts’ wealth grew by around $5 billion but that wasn’t enough to keep the Pratts in the coveted top spot.
The Pratts slipped from first in 2020 to fifth place because of the breathtaking growth in wealth by the other multi-billionaires.
ALAN WILSON
The past 12 months have also been a record for Alan Wilson and his reclusive family, the names behind the extremely successful Reece plumbing chain.
Their wealth reaches $6.61bn thanks to Reece’s surging share price. The Wilson family marked the 100-year anniversary of Reece with a record profit and dividend – and a record high for the share price.
Wilson is the patriarch of the family, which traces its links to Reece back to 1953 when his late father Leslie gained control of what was HJ Reece. Wilson opened his own store, Austral Hardware, in 1960.
JOHN GANDEL
The next wealthiest Victorian is John Gandel, who has an estimated $5.11bn fortune.
Gandel owns 50 per cent of the giant Chadstone Shopping Centre, which in a piece of unfortunate timing celebrated its 60th anniversary last year when it was shut down for a time due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.
The value of Chadstone fell, but it still has a book value of more than $6bn - showing what a bargain it was when Gandel paid $37m for the centre in 1983.
LINDSAY FOX
Lindsay Fox is the fourth wealthiest Victorian with a $3.93bn fortune.
His Linfox trucking and logistics business has been busier than ever during COVID-19 and has annual revenue of almost $3bn.
The Fox family also owns Avalon Airport and half of Essendon Airport, which is valued at more than $1bn.
AVI SILVER AND EDDIE HIRSCH
The next wealthiest Victorians are Avi Silver and Eddie Hirsch, the low-profile owners of the United Petroleum business.
United has come a long way since 1990, when it had 23 sites across the state after they had started what was Astron in 1981. United now has more than 450 sites around Australia, accounting for about 10 per cent of the fuel market.
The duo also own United Terminals, which owns fuel terminals and an ethanol refinery, and the Pie Face chain which now has 200 locations in five countries.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart tops the The List this year with a fortune of more than $30bn.
Rinehart can thank the booming iron ore price (fuelled by China’s steelmaking roaring back to life after the initial outbreak), and so can fellow mining magnate Andrew Forrest, in second place with a total wealth of $29.61b (up from $7.43b in 2020).
In third and fourth places on the national list are Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are next at $21.99b and $21.95b respectively, each having grown his wealth by more than $9 billion in a year.
The full 2021 edition of The List - Australia’s Richest 250 is published Saturday in The Weekend Australian.
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Originally published as Richest 250: Anthony Pratt tops Victoria’s richest people list in 2021
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