Pulping discarded cartons into jute-mill cones: 15,000-20,000 cones a week and about 50 workers
A little-educated entrepreneur in Jashore went from sack stitching to collecting waste carton and then to making paper products. He now turns discarded cartons into pulp and sells yarn cones to jute mills.
A 53-year-old entrepreneur runs a small factory in the BSCIC small and cottage industry estate at Jhumjhumpur, Jashore. He studied only up to class three. In the early 1980s, at age 10, he began stitching sacks for Tk 15 a month. After losing that job he started as a middleman in waste paper and cartons, using Tk 135 from his mother's savings. Around 1995 he rented a room and supplied collected cartons to a ball-pen company. In 2009 he rented a BSCIC plot and began making packaging sheets, and bought the plot five years ago. In mid-2021 he took a Tk 50 lakh loan from the Agrani Bank BSCIC branch in Jashore and started making yarn cones for jute mills from pulped discarded cartons. The factory uses two tons of old cartons a day, supplied by local middlemen at Tk 10 a kg. It turns out 15,000 to 20,000 cones a week with about 50 workers. The cones go to one jute mill in Fultala, Khulna and one in Abhaynagar, Jashore, at an average Tk 3 each. After costs the profit is only 30 to 50 paisa per cone. He wants a new BSCIC plot to expand.
Lessons
- 1.Turning a cheap input like discarded carton into a product can move you from middleman to producer, but it needs capital; here it took a Tk 50 lakh loan.
- 2.With a profit of only 30-50 paisa per cone, steady sales of thousands of cones a week are what keep the business going.
- 3.Depending on just two jute mills is a risk, and cartons arrive through middlemen, so both supply and buyers need watching.
We published this with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.
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