Sustainable Leadership: Gary Smith's Vision for BioPak

Tim

Welcome to the Venari Podcast. I'm Tim Hartnell, and in this episode of our CEO Packaging series, I’ll be speaking with Gary Smith. Gary is CEO of BioPak. I'm very excited to be speaking with Gary today. BioPak is out there disrupting the 3.5-million-tonne plastic packaging industry with their innovative product range. They work with some incredible brands like McDonald's, Aldi, and Qantas. In this episode, we're going to be discussing leadership, Gary's journey, scaling teams, and what the future holds for BioPak.

Gary, it's great to have you on.

Gary

Thank you for having me.

Tim

So, let's kick off. Do you want to tell us a little bit about BioPak and how you're changing the industry for good?

Gary

Yeah. Listen, our, our philosophy is that when you take a product that you're using for ten minutes, it should not stay around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And there's been a habitual addiction to plastic, whether it be plastic cutlery, plastic knives and forks, plastic cups, plastic takeaway containers. So, if you look at our philosophy, it is: we should be able to take product from the raw materials from the earth and not deplete resources, not make items scarce. Like, what if we were using wood – if we were using any type of plant starches, it should be rapidly renewable. We should be able to take natural raw materials, make products, use them for the term. And as we do, if we’re having a coffee, a sandwich, you know, a takeaway meal, and then return it back to the earth. And that is the philosophy bound up as it has always been to create a world without waste.

So, it sounds like a modern technology. It sounds like something new. But this is what we had in 2006 or 2007 when we started the business. That is how we started the business, with the understanding that we want to make product from plants, we want to use them or return them by composting. We could create some circularity and there'd be nothing, you know, that would number one, make the raw material scarce, that would stay around forever. And importantly, that would, you know, emit greenhouse gases and carbon. You know, we’ve got to make sure we reduce that, because those are, I guess, the definitions of sustainability: you know, renewable resources and no carbon emissions. And that's been our mindset, our philosophy, our ethos since the day we started 15 or 16 years ago.

Tim

Brilliant. I get hugely excited when you talk about what you're up to there. Really fascinating stuff.

So yeah, 2006, I think it was, when you founded the company. What's happened since then? You know, your early challenges – any insights would be great.

Gary

I mean, the early challenges were looking for the products we started with thinking we should try and develop a polymer, a plant-based polymer. We started with bags. We started working with major manufacturers and sometimes distributors to try and get into the larger-scale side of the market. And then we hit the GFC, which unfortunately derailed everything. All the money we invested in the business pretty much disappeared and we were left with, ‘How are we going to educate people, how are we going to sell them our philosophy?’ And it's not about a spreadsheet. Here's a product, what's my price? Is it less? Can I have it? It's about the difference people can make. We’ve always worked to go to the consumer, you know, the person in the street, and say, ‘Here's the difference you could be making.’ And we literally walked the streets of the countries that we represent right now, or that we are represented in right now, to build education and knowledge.

So, how’s it changed? We've got a massive consumer demand. The consumer demand filtered up the channel over 2007, right all the way to 2015, where all of a sudden distributors and brands thought, ‘Hey, I'm seeing more of this product, let me make inquiries.’ And that led us maybe in the last, you know, six or seven years, for the brands to say, ‘Hey, here's a partner, here's someone that can look at our products, that can take us on a journey, on how we can improve it, how we can create circular economy solutions, how we can, you know, lose our addiction to plastic.’ And really avoid future single-use plastic bags, which are prominent throughout most countries.

So, that's how we've changed. We've changed from a small business walking the streets, educating a consumer. It's built-up knowledge base, which has made large distributors be great partners of ours, large brands and QSRs be great partners of ours. And obviously we've got great customers, as you said in your intro, like KFC and McDonald's. In the UK, we have customers like Wahaca and Deliveroo and yeah, we've got great brands like GYG and, you know, in Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, we've got real brands that have really worked as partners with us and elevated, you know, potentially our brand and built our business.

Tim

Brilliant. And you're experiencing still massive growth, which is great to see. No questions around leadership. What's your approach to leadership and maybe how has that changed? You know, you've made acquisitions. How are you delivering on that?

Gary

It's hard. You know, you start off in a small business and it's pretty much easier to run than a bigger business. And I'm living, I'm learning every day. We started off with, I don't know, one warehouse and selling 500 cartons a month, maybe, or 200 cartons a month. You know, we do, half a million cartons. Something, you know, what is that times one thousand: 500 million items every single month. So, it really has escalated. We've got a team of 250, 260 people. We don't do our own transport. And so, it doesn't include drivers and some warehousing staff. It really is a bigger team.

The leadership for me has still been to try be knee-jerk, to just try to stay in startup mode, okay. To try and give as much as I can to individuals to run their own businesses, whether it be marketing, whether it be finance, whether it be operations. I give as much as I can to the team to run by themselves, but I have to make sure, my leadership style is to make sure I am looking at the results, and when people go off track I definitely get back into the weeds to help them rebuild, because I can't let go of everything. That's, I guess, the definition of a founder or an entrepreneur: that they always want to be involved. But no, I do believe that I let go. I do believe that I give people bandwidth to run their own business, to make their own decisions, to do what they do. But I always try, and I'm pretty successful most of the time, in keeping an eye on reporting or just keeping an eye on teams to make sure that they are producing, performing, keeping us efficient, process improving. And when they don't, I absolutely interject and get involved to try rebuild with them.

Tim

Brilliant point. I think, yeah, it's that balance. You know, everyone loves autonomy, but there's a time when you probably need to bring that person a little bit back to the ground.

Gary

Yeah, very important. And I've made mistakes. I've let go. I've definitely let go where things have gone off track and I haven't kept my eye on the ball. You know, you go two, three months and you say, ‘We're not working well in that department or that team or that business.’ It's not going as planned, but it's never too late to get back in and rebuild, build confidence, expand the team. So yeah, it sounds great on a podcast, but no one can do everything perfectly every time.

Tim

Absolutely. Yeah, very inspiring words.

And then just moving on to scaling teams, you know, what are the considerations as you are scaling? You know, and maybe it's changed through the years.

Gary

My scaling teams is always about my team. My team is my core nine or 10 leaders. Leaders in the business. And I'm going to make sure my team are working. If I need a new leader, let's say we expand massively in logistics, and we've got a head of logistics that handles supply chain as well. It could be that we need a head of the supply chain and a head of logistics because we’re we so much, so much bigger when they split the functionality. I need my team, and I need to constantly enforce that they need to have an efficiency in themselves. I guess when we see people working seven days a week and working long hours and getting burnt out, it's an indication that we're very busy, number one, and we often have that in the business. It's also sometimes an indication that they don't have the right team. And when you don't have the right team, and you're passionate and you want to produce, you just put the extra time in yourselves and you can only do it for a short period of time. I guess what I like to do is look after my team and then ensure that I'm working with them to make sure they've got an efficient team.

So, scaling means that we've got to make sure that we look to automate first, because automation is always more efficient than, unfortunately, when people get involved. And we got it and we put a lot of money into technology and a lot of focus into, into technology, number one. Number two is we have to make sure that we’re building foundations for growth. And we luckily have had constant growth. We constantly have to be looking at, right, do we have enough for the next leg up? As I said, sounds great and inspiring on a podcast. We don't get it right every time, we might only get it right 50 or 60% of the time. But it's important. Just take a seat, stand back and have a look and make sure you've got the team for the next leg up. And that's, it's been something that I've tried to do better as, as our business grows, but I've never done it perfectly.

Tim

Yeah. There are always unforeseen circumstances on that front.

And just very quickly for the viewers and listeners, you know, in terms of where you operate, where's the next big key battleground, if you like?

Gary

Yeah. So we operate in Australia and New Zealand. That's where we founded the business. We've expanded five years ago into the UK, and we have great business over there and those three territories, we have really good full teams, great businesses. We went to Singapore about four or five years ago again, got an absolutely amazing team over there. And the individual that heads up Singapore is now taking an Asia Pacific role. He's opened up in Hong Kong. We're now looking at Japan. And I know it's not Asia, but, and Saudi Arabia. So, Jeremy, who runs those districts, are looking over the next, or that area, is looking for expansion through Asia and the Middle East over the next, you know, two to three years and we can pretty much open up in a country, a new country, let's say, once every six months. We just have to set up, be comfortable, be comfortable. We have the team. And then move on.

The big as you say, battleground for us is Europe. Europe is a huge opportunity. We believe, and I really believe, that we can add a lot of value in that territory. We’re looking aggressively now to get into France. There are good progressive laws for sustainable packaging, or rather for banning plastics. And from there, you know, it's just a question of how quickly we can get a setup, get a great team in there, start getting product in there. Because our business is very much, ‘if we build it, they will come.’ You can't get into a territory and say, ‘if you buy from us, I'll bring it in and warehouse it across France.’ No, we're going to bring product in. We're going to bring our full range in there. And then we need a team to start building and selling and obviously, yes, building our business there. And depending on how quickly we can do each territory, I'd like to see us in five to six countries across Europe over the next two to three years.

Tim

Wow. That is, that is impressive. And look, it's great to be partnering with you on that. Grateful for that too.

So finally, where are you looking to take BioPak? We touched on it literally just then. And what do you want to achieve?

Gary

We believe BioPak, the greatest threat to BioPak – and we've assessed competition, we've accessed technology – the greatest threat to BioPak is BioPak. We are the only people that I believe stand in our way of really achieving great things. We think we can change behaviours in territories that don't have the same sustainable progression as we have in our current countries that we operate in. So, this is a great opportunity to build our business into new territories as we've just discussed.

There's also a great opportunity to build new products. We constantly have to innovate new products. We do have plastic. And even if we have a great compostable plant-based product we're looking at, how can we make it better? So where do we want to take BioPak in the next three to five years? You know, my ambition is, number one, we can double it if we just don’t get out of our own way, if we have the right team, if we build the right, if we build the knowledge of the people, if we introduce and innovate products, and we really, you know, start to continue educating and building our partners.

I think there's great opportunity in the disposable packaging market to go and expand our business, but we also plan to destroy our business. We plan to eliminate single-use plastics. Now that – there's definitely, there's always going to be a place for single-use, and 99% of the market right now. But we are investing heavily into it, into reusables. We bought a great business called Husky recently. We're looking for takeaway containers and cups to get in on the same methodology as we do disposable packaging.

We can deliver to a café a thousand cups. They’re just reusable. They can use it, and through a scanner the customer could take it, but the customer can return it to service stations, shopping centres. We’re going to establish many different nodes where they're going to turn the cups. It’s convenient. Reusables don't work right now because it's not convenient. So, over the next three to five years, we're going to build multiple nodes where you might have two or three in your car. You've got 14 days to return it. You're going to fill up your car with petrol. We'll have a collection point there.

So, my vision or dream is to make sure we have nodes throughout definitely, definitely the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and we'll work with other countries as we go. In all the major cities, supply our current cafés and restaurants and partners and QSRs with the reusable. Make sure that there's an app where it transfers the ownership to the user, gives the user ample opportunity to return it. I don’t think we’ll penalize it if they don't. We’ll possibly gamify it if they do: get some frequent flier airline miles or return 20 cups and get a free coffee. And that way we will be setting up sanitisation stations where we thoroughly wash and dry them. So there's no hygiene issues. Box them and send them back. We'll also make the product that's easily stackable, because if I deliver a typical reusable coffee cup to a café right now and they're doing 800 coffees a day, 800 reusable cups will probably take the size of the café and the neighbour and the other neighbours. So we've designed product that nests, that fits cartons, that is easily the same size of the disposable.

So again, in a nutshell, I feel like reusables is the most sustainable way of having a coffee quickly, or a sandwich or a takeaway meal. I feel like if we make it convenient and we set up the infrastructure to make sure it's used multiple times, our general washing time’s down 1,500 times with that product, I think it will start replacing disposables. Maybe not in five years, but there will come a time when that is the norm and we want to be innovators there, we want to be leaders in that space.

Tim

Inspiring. Honestly, hearing how you're talking about it – you thought of everything, for one. So clearly, that's a step in the right direction in terms of growth. But yeah, fascinating stuff. Every time I speak to you, I’m more and more inspired. So, thank you so much, that brings us to the end. That was really engaging.

Gary, I appreciate your time. Like I said, yeah. Looking forward to the journey and where you're taking the company next. And, hey, look, we're catching up, I think in a few weeks anyway, when you get over to the UK. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

We'll see you then.

Gary

Thank you.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

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