Packaging magnate Anthony Pratt displaces Harry Triguboff for top spot on Financial Review Rich List

Packaging and recycling tycoon Anthony Pratt has displaced Harry Triguboff as Australia’s wealthiest person, topping the Financial Review Rich List with $12.60 billion in wealth.

This is the highest wealth value Pratt has ever had. His Visy cardboard box manufacturing and recycling business dominates Australia, but his rising wealth is mainly due to the huge growth of Pratt Industries in the United States, according to a media release.

Pratt was #2 on the Rich List in 2016 behind Triguboff, Australia’s largest apartment developer.

Triguboff, the owner and head of property developer Meriton Group, topped the BRW Rich 200 list for the first time in 2016 after having appeared in all 33 editions in its history.

He displaced mining tycoon Gina Rinehart from a year earlier.

Triguboff’s fortune was listed at $10.62 billion in last year’s list - and at over $11 billion reputedly this year. 

The full 2017 Rich List, which puts out the country's wealthiest 200 individuals, comes out on Friday when Property Observer will publish Harry Triguboff's latest estimated fortune.

Pratt was last #1 on the list of Australia’s 200 wealthiest people in 2009, months after his father Richard Pratt died.

Pratt, who is executive chairman of Pratt Industries and the cardboard box and recycling giant Visy in Australia, took over the US business in 1991.

The business has grown rapidly in the past decade, helped by a surge in sales of recycled cardboard boxes and contracts with American corporate giants such as Amazon and Home Depot, which sells 1 million Pratt-made packing and storage boxes each week.  The business now employs 7,000 people.

Pratt now spends more time in Australia, where his sisters Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder also have an ownership stake in Visy.