Anthony Pratt Quotes
101 Anthony Pratt Quotes
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Business in the US is war; it’s not like Australia. Companies literally attack each other. I think this is why so many Australian companies have difficulties here – they expect you can act like you do at home, and it is just not enough.
Anthony Pratt
Ali’s [Muhammad Ali] a marvellous character. We love him, our customers love him and when he comes into our factories you’ve never seen anything like it. Loads of staff told me meeting him was the biggest day of their lives.
Anthony Pratt
It’s not really an extravagance at all. We deal directly with our customers, the box makers, and it’s vital for us to get them to visit our sites. Who can resist doing that when they know that Muhammad Ali might be there? We need a point of difference to compete with the much bigger American companies, and this is it. What other company gives a box maker and his wife a chance to have their picture taken with Tony Curtis?
Anthony Pratt
My dad has always taught me the importance of relationships. When I was a kid, I used to go around with him in the car when he was a salesman for the business. These guys would regularly tell me how important he was to them and what a special relationship they had with him. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] I love Australia.
Anthony Pratt
The business opportunities are endless. I think Australia is just a great place to bring up a family.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] After living 20 years alone in America, mainly in Atlanta and also New York, I figured if we are going to go 9999 miles back to Australia, we might as well go the extra one mile and move into Raheen where my mother can be close to Leon and Lilly.
Anthony Pratt
[On not be concerned that Raheen had been his father’s home.] No, not really. It has brought my mother a lot of joy.
Anthony Pratt
I am very proud of being Jewish. I went to a Jewish school all my life. It is very important to me that Leon is brought up with those values. He will go to Bialik college when he is old enough.
Anthony Pratt
[On his father in 2011] He was always focused on the business.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] Business conditions are good. We are fortunate commodity prices are up over the world and, fortunately, we are in a good position, being close to Asia.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] I think that this current cyclical upturn may have a structural component to it.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] Nobody really knows the answer to what will happen in the future but there is a view – and Jeffrey Immelt says this to me, and I respect him – iron ore prices and paper prices, which move together, are being driven by the middle-classification of China and India, who are driving the great industrialisation of the 21st century.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011] I’m proud we have built a billion-dollar business from scratch here in the US. It has been done very much in a slow, building way. It wasn’t an instant type of thing. America is a huge market where persistence is very important and I am a builder by nature.
Anthony Pratt
The biggest opportunity to make this happen is people. The reason I am doing this interview is to get the word out, particularly to young college students and university kids – and to engineers specifically. There is an opportunity for action on climate change. Young people tend to be more interested in solving climate change and I think climate change can be solved by engineers.
Anthony Pratt
Our business model has given us a great base to grow and take advantage of what I call the four waves of recycling. The first wave is to turn things such as waste paper, plastics and metals into packaging. We’re already riding that wave. The second wave is to take things that can’t be recycled and recover clean energy from them. We’ve started to ride that wave too. The third wave is to work out how to viably and sustainably recycle municipal solid waste or real garbage into energy. The fourth wave is to do the same with sewage and other waste. I can see us one day moving into the third or even the fourth waves as whole new businesses for Visy.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011 on Alan Moss] He is a genius risk manager. Allan would be the first person that would tell you that before worrying too much about the Aussie dollar, you need to check what happens to your own sell price as the Aussie dollar moves up. And if your own sell price moves up, that is a high-quality problem. Allan is into finding high-quality problems!
Anthony Pratt
[On John Murphy] John did a fantastic job for us. He decided he had done his job, to move on. I wanted him to stay. He’s a great bloke, a great bloke. I admire him enormously.
Anthony Pratt
I believe in the difference that a man or woman can make at the top of an organization. Once you have a really good guy in place at the top, the next most important thing is continuity of management, as opposed to a revolving door. The most underestimated thing in business is management continuity. It lends stability – the things the guy was putting in place have a chance to keep going, rather than everything going back to zero. Having people around you who have been with you for a long time has some virtue as well. Chris [Daly] had been with us for 26 years and I trusted him enormously. He is a tremendous guy.
Anthony Pratt
[On his focus as executive chairman of Visy and Pratt Industries.] Choosing the right people. Dealing with customers and making sure we are investing our money in the right projects.
Anthony Pratt
[On visiting his factories at 7am at least twice a week.] The first thing I do at the factories is see if they’re clean. The other is to see how many machines are running. So if I see 10 finishing machines, at any one time six of them should be running and four should be being set up. If only two of them are running and eight of them are set up, it is not a good thing.
Anthony Pratt
[On fatherhood.] It is indescribable. It is unconditional love… It makes you less scared of dying.
Anthony Pratt
[On being a father] It just builds you up. And I think Claudine [his partner] and Leon and Lilly have done that. I am very pleased I have been able to find what I feel is true love with Claudine. I feel very fortunate that we have had children.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2011 on whether he will ever marry Claudine Revere.] We are just happy, just happy.
Anthony Pratt
[Half in jest on the Red River that runs next to his plant (The biggest cardboard box factory in the world) behind Richard Pratt Drive] They named that river after me.
Anthony Pratt
[On doing his exercise habit of a one-mile swim every morning.] If you don’t do it every morning, you don’t do it.
Anthony Pratt
[On building up the Pratt/Visy business in the United States] It is definitely true that I wanted to be able to say to myself I build something. I am very proud that we have built a $1 billion company from scratch in America. That’s absolutely true. I did want to go to America to prove myself.
Anthony Pratt
[On his father’s impassioned rants.] Business is a passionate enterprise and Richard was more passionate than most. We yelled and we laughed, but above all we were continually engaged and I enjoyed the relationship immensely.
Anthony Pratt
[On his father Richard Pratt] His favourite saying to me, and I don’t know if this has ever been public, was ‘Good, better, best – never let it rest till the good is better and the better best.’
Anthony Pratt
[On what his father taught him best] Persistence. Being able to take a punch. The importance of having great people at the top. ‘Don’t mix with mugs’ was one of his great sayings. Working as hard as you can, the importance of being close to customers.
Anthony Pratt
[On one of the things his father said to him at an early age.] He said, ‘If you were looking at people walking across a grassy knoll and you have to build a pathway made out of concrete, would you build it where the people actually walked or would you build it and then make them walk where you built?’
Anthony Pratt
[On whether Visy could eventually be broken up like the Smorgon family empire] No, I don’t see that. I can’t speak for other people. However, I believe [we’ll] all stay together.
Anthony Pratt
[In 2008 on family breakups.] Break-ups destroy wealth and the company loses.
Anthony Pratt
Fiona and Ruffy own 100 percent of Pact. I support whatever Ruffy, as the operator, does. It is totally his call. I have tremendous respect for him as a businessman and a brother-in-law.
Anthony Pratt
I love my sisters and Alex and Ruffy are great guys. We see each other at least once a week, at dinner every Friday night. Sometimes it is at Fiona’s, sometimes at Alex and Heloises’s. We have fun. Visy and Pact compete, no question – vigorously and robustly. That is business. But when it comes to family we are very close.
Anthony Pratt
I will never voluntarily go public. Number one, it is not in our DNA. Number two, I don’t think we make great partners because we are used to running things a certain way. It would be hard to superimpose what we do on somebody else. And three, we don’t have experience in things such as earnings per share, which is what life is all about when you are a public company.
Anthony Pratt
[On what his mother Jeanne Pratt brings to the table as co-chairman of Visy] Brilliant judgement. [The best example?] Not going public! She has great instincts for people. She is very direct about her views. For example, she thinks there’s great future in the water platform and the clean energy parts of the business. We talk often.
Anthony Pratt
[On his father Richard Pratt in 2011] He is a great man… He did more for Australia than anyone I know.
Anthony Pratt
[On whether his father died too soon.] Yes! He died before I wanted him to, before anyone wanted him to. I hoped he would live to 90. He worked himself to death… He worked really, really, hard and sacrificed his health for great nights with customers.
Anthony Pratt
[On his last words to his father, seven hours before he died] I said: ‘I love you.’ [The response?] He squeezed my hand.
Anthony Pratt
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