Billionaire Anthony Pratt is moving to US after scoring green card

The cardboard box making and recycling magnate has got his green card, more than 30 years after working at his family’s first US factory in Georgia.

Billionaire Anthony Pratt at 2024 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he is now moving to after getting his Green Card.

It has taken the best part of three decades, but billionaire Anthony Pratt is finally making a permanent move to the US.

The cardboard box-making and recycling magnate is the owner of the Pratt Industries business in the US, and shares ownership of Visy in Australia with sisters Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder.

On Monday, Mr Pratt said on LinkedIn he had been granted his Green Card for permanent US residency last month and he and his family will now be living in America, where he has several houses and apartments and a membership of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club.

Anthony Pratt has an apartment overlooking Central Park.

While he will remain an Australian citizen and maintain his position on The List – Australia’s Richest 250, Mr Pratt said in his LinkedIn post:

“We decided it was time to live in America because:

(1) My family are all US citizens.

(2) Over the past 30 years we have invested to build 70 factories in America, creating 12,000 well-paying American manufacturing jobs.

(3) I will remain chairman of Visy Australia, and will be returning to Australia on a regular basis.”

Mr Pratt has been splitting his time between America and Australia since being sent to the US in 1991 by his late father Richard Pratt to oversee the operations of the family business, which then consisted of one ageing factory in Macon, Georgia.

Anthony Pratt and singer Katy Perry at Pratt's New York apartment.

He and his family are likely to be based in New York, where he owns a penthouse apartment over several levels atop the historic Sherry-Netherland hotel overlooking Central Park.

In 2019, he reportedly spent more than $20m to buy the Westchester estate of actors Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas outside New York City.

Mr Pratt’s partner Claudine Revere runs an upscale corporate catering and event planning business in New York, and has done business with The Trump Organisation.

During his first presidency, President Trump helped open a Pratt Industries plant in Ohio in 2019 alongside then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Mr Pratt had been a voluble supporter of President Trump but in more recent time has kept a low profile after allegations surfaced that the President had shared submarine secrets with Mr Pratt after leaving office post the 2020 US election. Mr Pratt was reportedly interviewed by the FBI over the matter.

But the Australian billionaire has been a long-term believer in the US as a market for his business, opening a new $US700m paper mill in Kentucky last year, his biggest project in America.