Packaging
2015: No.42 £85m
2014: No.36 £85m
Birmingham’s Hall Green Greyhound Stadium, home to dog racing for nearly 90 years, was sold to the Alimahomeds ' Euro Property Investments for £3 million in April 2014.
The sale of the site, which includes the 2,700 capacity greyhound stadium, a snooker club, a restaurant, a bar and a 48-bedroom hotel, raised concerns for the future of the stadium, although the site is let to the Greyhound Racing Association until 2028.
Euro Property Investments is a subsidiary of Yardley-based Euro Packaging. More than 200 jobs were saved in Birmingham and around the world in September 2009 when brothers Afzal and Shabir Alimahomed and family took the Euro Packaging business back into their ownership three years after selling it to a private equity house.
The takeover resulted in Euro Packaging Jersey Guarantee, owned by the family, taking Europackaging and Border Converters back under their wing for an estimated £20 million.
The 2006 sale of Euro Packaging to New York and London-based private equity firm MidOcean Partners is thought to have netted the family more than £100 million. Not bad for a business set up by Afzal and Shabir’s father Abdul who arrived in the UK from Malawi in 1974 and began a business as a paper bag merchant.
Euro Packaging is now a £170 million-plus business selling 3,000 different kinds of packaging around the world. The company employs more than 1,000 people and 1,300 pallets of Euro Packaging products leave its depots every day. Plastic packaging packets are produced at a modern facility in Malaysia.
Afzal, 50 and Shabir,45, are responsible for the running of the business which has sales offices in China, India and Switzerland. The company also has interests in Turkey, Spain and Dubai. In 2012 Euro Packaging won the UK Packaging Award for its ant-bacterial refuse sacks.
Among other products, Euro Packaging provides billions of carrier bags a year to UK supermarkets and major stores including Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA, Carrefour, Somerfield, Greggs and Ikea. The company also supplies a wide range of re-usable shopping bags.
