Billionaire Anthony Pratt to spend $7bn in US recycling and box making expansion

America is a market where ‘growth is forever’ according to the manufacturing magnate, who is making his biggest bet yet there.

Pratt Industries cardboard box making and recycling business is currently building a $US500m paper mill in Kentucky. Picture: Stuart McEvoy/The Australian.

Billionaire Anthony Pratt will spend more than $7bn expanding in the US over the next decade, as part of the biggest ever expenditure strategy for his manufacturing empire.

Mr Pratt has pledged to invest $US5bn ($7.75bn) in American recycling and clean energy infrastructure to create more than 5000 manufacturing jobs in 10 years.

His Pratt Industries cardboard box making and recycling business is currently building a $US500m paper mill in Kentucky, one of the first moves in the $US5bn spending plan. Earlier this year, it clinched an agreement to spend $US200m on a new factory in the Dallas suburb of Cedar Hill in Texas, which will be Pratt’s 71st factory in the US.

Pratt Industries also opened a $US200m corrugated box manufacturing plant in Park City, Kansas in October.

The US business has invested more than $US10bn since Pratt moved to run what was a one mill operation in Macon, Georgia in 1991.

Mr Pratt announced his latest spending plans before America’s Ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, at the l AmCham Alliance Ambassador’s Award function in Sydney.

“Pratt Industries is proud to be the largest Australian employer of Americans, employing over 11,000 Americans in well-paying, green- collar, manufacturing jobs operating more than 70 factories across America,” Mr Pratt said on Tuesday night.

Mr Pratt said recycling was an important weapon against climate change. Picture: Nic Walker

“The value of our investment in American recycling and clean energy infrastructure is now over $US10bn. In America steady growth is forever and we are honoured to have built five out of America’s last seven paper mills, all 100 per cent recycled.”

Mr Pratt’s wealth was estimated at $27.77bn in the 2022 edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian in late March.

Mr Pratt said recycling was an important weapon against climate change because “as things decay in landfill they emit methane, which is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 25 year period. As a result, landfills emit more greenhouse gases than global aviation.”

Mr Pratt, who owns Pratt Industries had previously pledged to spend $US2bn in America in a 2017 address before former US president Donald Trump at a function for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea in New York.

President Trump stood and applauded the commitment.

Pratt Industries is the fifth largest corrugated packaging company in the US and with 11,000 employees is now bigger than the family’s Visy operation in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Pratt has said he would spend $2bn in Australia, where he owns Visy with sisters Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder.

Last month, Visy broke ground on its new $500m glass food and beverage container recycling and manufacturing plant in Yatala on the Gold Coast.

It is also building a new $150m corrugated box factory at Hemmant, south of Brisbane airport, and spending $48m on major upgrades to the company’s recycled material recovery facility at Gibson Island on the Brisbane River.

Visy was listed as the second largest private Australian company by revenue in IBISWorld’s Top 500 Private Companies list published by The Australian in September.

IBISWorld said Visy’s annual revenue was about $9.3bn.

Mr Pratt has long been keen for Pratt Industries to keep expanding in America, where the mill in Kentucky under construction will produce paper exclusively made from recycled material. The mill is also the biggest single investment by Pratt Industries in its three-decade history.

The billionaire has said the facility “will be the world‘s most advanced, environmentally-friendly 100 per cent recycled paper mill” when it is finished next year.

Pratt Industries is also build a 65,000 sq m cardboard box factory next to the mill, with construction for that likely to begin no later than 2025 and then become operational by the following year.

The projects would create about 320 full-time jobs and another 700 during their construction phases.

“Our focus is all about the rebirth of the great American manufacturing capability, especially in regional America,” said Mr Pratt.

“And this investment represents another example of our commitment to building America’s green infrastructure, including clean energy. This creates high-paying, highly-skilled green-collar jobs.”

Originally published as Billionaire Anthony Pratt to spend $7bn in US recycling and box making expansion