Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

Rita Shah

Shabra Plastics and Packaging

Since coming to Ireland in the Eighties, joint managing director and co-founder of Shabra Plastics and Packaging Rita Shah has successfully diversified the company to be a leader in recycling and manufacturing of plastics products.

To survive the current economic environment, many Irish businesses have been forced over the past 18 months to take a long hard look at their operations, offerings and strategies, and, in many cases, to restructure, diversify and change focus.

For Castleyblaney-based Shabra Plastics and Packaging, however, the equivalent catalyst for change came back in 2002 when a substantial portion of the company’s revenue was wiped out overnight with the introduction of the plastic bags levy.

Identifying new revenue streams

At that stage, the company manufactured plastic bags of all kinds and also had its own plastics recycling and manufacturing facilities. To find new revenue streams, Shah and her management team – including co-founder and business partner Oliver Brady – tried to identify additional products and services the business could supply to existing customers.

“We said, when we supply a roll of black sacks or clear sacks to industry, what else can we sell to that market?” explains Shah.

“We had to think about what we could sell to be competitive and to create a one-stop-shop, so that we could sell our customers other items as well as our own manufactured stock. It would mean having the same salesperson, the same delivery, the same invoice and the same cheque.”

Taking the recycling route

The answer was to create a totally closed-loop operation, with Shabra moving into the paper and ancillary packaging markets and investing further in recycling so it could remove the waste from its customers’ back doors.

The reaction from customers was hugely positive, says Shah, pointing out that beforehand they would have had to pay other companies to take their waste away.

According to Shah, Shabra is now Ireland’s only integrated recycling, manufacturing and supply company in the area of plastics, packaging, disposables, paper bags, foil products, dissolvable labels and chemicals.

Innovation curve

Recycling of waste materials – including all types of plastic, as well as wooden pallets, paper, cardboard and metals – is an ever-increasing part of the business.

And there’s a constant focus on innovation and continuing to expand the range of services and products. The company’s client list currently includes domestic and international blue-chip companies and a wide range of semi-state bodies and health boards.

Entrepreneurial instinct engrained from an early age

For Shah, who was born and brought up in Thika, Kenya, with Indian grandparents on both sides, setting up her own business was on the cards from a very young age.

“I always wanted my own business; wanted to be an entrepreneur,” she explains. “The whole family was entrepreneurial on both my mother’s and father’s side. Indians are a very close community.

“If you were my cousin or sister, I would give you an incentive to be in business. The choice would be yours whether you take it or not. You’re competing with everyone and you want to be successful.”

Shah’s brother and sister continue to be involved in the family company and Shah herself visits once every two months because of her own business interests there.

Starting a business in Ireland in the mid-Eighties during a recession

She came to Ireland in the mid-Eighties after completing third-level education and working in her father’s sisal business for a time.

By this stage, she had also picked up skills and experience in the extrusion, recycling, manufacturing, printing and bag-making areas, working abroad for plastic companies.

On the recommendation of Brady, who had worked in her family’s companies in Kenya for a number of years, Shah’s father asked her to spend some time looking at the opportunities and risks of starting a business here.

“I was studying in England and I came over here thinking I’d stay for a couple of years,” she says. “But my heart was always home in Kenya. Little did I think that it’d be so many years and I’d still be here.”

Detecting a niche with plastic

Shah was convinced that plastic was the way forward and so the company was set up as a plastics manufacturing facility, initially in Carrickmacross, in 1986.

“Plastics is one of the commodities that everybody uses, whether you are in industry, retail or whatever,” she explains.

Shah identified a niche market for small and medium runs of printed plastic bags. “It was small money, easy to operate and helped all the corner shops in Ireland,” she explains.

Innovation and R&D

The company has progressed ever since. “First we put in extruders and die makers. In 1995 we put in recycling facilities when we saw that we were importing another country’s waste granules to make the black bags.  We thought, ‘there’s so much rubbish everywhere, why don’t we recycle that?’ Since then, we’ve just gone into vertical integration, one thing at a time, and have focused on innovation and research and development, and never looked back really.”

The company has also built up a substantial export business, with sales worldwide – primarily to India, the Far East and Europe – now accounting for 50pc of its turnover.

Ethnic entrepreneurs and business woman accolades

Recognition has also come in the shape of numerous accolades and awards, both for the company and Shah herself who, most notably, won O2 Business Woman of the Year in 2003 and the inaugural Permanent TSB Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, and has been shortlisted in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Photo: Entrepreneur Rita Shah, joint managing director and co-founder of Shabra Plastics and Packaging

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Owner Manager magazine.