From Thika, near Nairobi in Kenya, to Castleblaney in Co Monaghan, Rita Shah has been on a journey and a half – and not just in air miles. Last Tuesday she was crowned permanent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 at an awards event in Dublin. The Kenyan businesswoman was presented with her award by President Mary McAleese, in what was the inaugural year of the awards scheme, which seeks to recognise migrant entrepreneurship and its benefits to society.
Rita, along with business partner Oliver Brady, operates Shabra Plastics and Packaging Ltd in Castleblaney. The company collects and recycles plastic waste materials, from which it manufactures a variety of plastic packaging products. The firm currently employs more than 60 people.Winning the inaugural Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year Awards is not the first time Rita Shah has been honoured for her business endeavours. She picked up the Monaghan Business Person of the Year in 2004 and has been an Ernest & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist.
Being in the recycling business is certainly apt for a woman who comes from a country where people cannot afford to waste anything. “Nothing is wasted in Kenya,” Rita told Metro Eireann. “If someone throws a bag into the bin, someone else takes it out. People are so poor.”
She continued: “My father requested I come to Ireland to look at the markets and the risks that would be involved in starting a new company,” she recalls. “I soon realised there was a niche market to cater for the small to medium runs of printed plastic bags.”
She approached a bank with her business plan, and “with the experience I gained from my father I had little difficulty in launching a small manufacturing plant in Carrickmacross to capture this market in 1986.”
She recalls a warm reception upon moving to Ireland. She remembers “the hospitality of the welcome, the friendship”, although she did have initial difficulties getting to grips with Ireland’s varying regional accents. Yet, having been “surrounded by Irish missionaries” back in Thika, near the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, she had a link with Ireland which helped her to settle.
The company Rita helped set up began manufacturing its own plastic bags, starting with black bags, using recycled material from the UK. From there, realising there was a demand for recycling in Ireland, Shabra set up its own plastics recycling plant.
“I carried out a very successful feasibility study with the help of Forbairt and was quite confident that if I could capture this market it would be very successful,” recalls Rita. “We could collect the waste in our own country and manufacture our own raw material, giving us a major advantage over our competitors.
“I soon established our company as one of the leading recyclers in Ireland and this operation was so successful that I found we could export all the excess capacity that we were making, and our export market has increased dramatically.”
Rita Shah compares her journey in business to a horse meeting hurdles on its way to the finishing line. It’s an apt description, as Rita is also a racehorse owner.
Like many successful businesspeople, her motivation through the years has not centred around money – but on pure achievement.
There have been major ‘hurdles’ along the way, such as the introduction by the Government of a levy on plastic bags, which required innovative thinking.
“In 2003 the government placed a levy of 15 per cent on plastic carrier bags. The company lost out on turnover to the value of 4m euro overnight. Shabra’s strategic response was to build business in the paper and ancillary packaging markets, and invest in research and development in the emerging recycling business,” she says. Rita states that she is close to establishing “the best recycling plant in Europe”, which she predicts will be an “icon for Ireland”.
She says: “Due to our success in recycling commercial and industrial waste to date, we have designed and are currently implementing a new washing and recycling line to deal with the recycling of all the domestic plastic bottles – another first for Ireland. Our line will be capable of recycling all waste post-consumer bottles from both the North and South of Ireland and the remaining capacity can be filled by importing unprocessed post-consumer bottles from abroad.”
Asked what drives her on, Rita replies simply: “I take pride in my achievements... and it is probably down to my hunger.”
Needless to say, her family back home in Kenya are “proud” of Rita’s enormous accomplishments.
Rita was not the only ethnic entrepreneur to pick up a prize at the permenent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. The five category winners were:
The winners were chosen by a panel comprising some of Ireland’s top businesspeople.
