Box king Anthony Pratt’s New York audience with Katy Perry

Only a global superstar such as Katy Perry could upstage a $1bn move by an Australian tycoon atop a skyscraper overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Anthony Pratt and Katy Perry at the Australian tycoon’s penthouse apartment overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Only a global superstar such as Katy Perry could upstage a $1bn move by an Australian tycoon atop a skyscraper overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Cardboard box and recycling magnate Anthony Pratt had no complaints though, enlisting the singing superstar to launch his biggest ­strategic bet yet. His Pratt Industries manufacturing empire is going digital – a move he ­believes even a successful yet old-fashioned business like his needs to make to stay relevant.

And who else but one of the most popular contemporary artists would he get to help with his quest to sell $1bn worth of boxes within a decade via a new digital business.

Performing in front of an intimate audience of about 80 Pratt Industries customers on Monday night, Perry stole the show in Mr Pratt’s penthouse apartment atop the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

Mr Pratt’s US business, the sister company to his family’s Australian giant Visy, is launching Pratt.com, which will make boxes to send directly to small and medium-sized firms across America.

Perry performed six songs, ­including Unconditionally and California Gurls, before finishing with all-time favourite Firework to send the crowd into raptures.

The Pratt empire has annual revenue of about $10bn, a large chunk of which is from making boxes and packaging for big business customers such as Lion Nathan in Australia and Amazon and Home Depot in the US.

But Mr Pratt said he now also wants to sell small batches of ­tailor-made boxes to the small and medium enterprise market.

“Digital and sustainability are the two biggest trends in Australia and America,” he said. “So in terms of digital and Pratt.com, what is happening is it will be ­direct from the manufacturer like ‘direct from Dell’ that (cuts out an intermediary) broker.

“We’re investing a lot in the technology that will be used for this, which is personalised printing directly on the boxes that we will ship from hi-tech speciality plants. My goal is to get a $1bn in sales from this.”

Anthony Pratt and Katy Perry at the Australian tycoon’s penthouse apartment overlooking New York’s Central Park.

The move is part of a $7bn spending pledge in the US over the next decade. He is planning to invest $US5bn ($7.75bn) in American recycling and clean energy infrastructure to create more than 5000 manufacturing jobs in 10 years.

In that time, he also wants to achieve $1bn in sales via Pratt.com of custom-made shipping boxes, pizza boxes, bubble mail packages and other tailor-made cardboard containers.

Pratt Industries is building a $US500m paper mill in Kentucky, which is about 50 per cent bigger than the previous five mills it has built in America.

Earlier this year, it clinched an agreement to spend $US200m on a new factory in the Dallas suburb of Cedar Hill, which will be Pratt’s 71st in the US. The Texas factory is one of several used by Pratt.com.

“This is a revolution in our ­industry. In the old days, you’d have a printing plate and you’d have to have a minimum run of 5000 or 10,000 boxes to justify the print and there was a flat fee,” Mr Pratt said.

“Now, with digital printing you can have 1000 boxes with 1000 different prints. In theory, you could have a pizza box with an individual name on it. And that technology has really been accelerated by online demands.

“Our industry used to be slow moving and there was not a perceived need for innovation. But now what we are building happens to fit nicely with the technology revolution. So that’s why I tell people sometimes that we are the Tesla of corrugated (boxes).”

The author travelled to the US with Pratt Industries.