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Confident of packing a punch... Family at heart of the busines... Cardboard cores could open doors for Fra... Pay-back time for loyal shareholders... |
Family at heart of the businessTRANSPACO chairman Sam Abelheim is a Second World War veteran who served with Allied forces in East Africa and Egypt as an instructor in mechanised military transport. Demobbed in 1945, he joined Moshal Gevisser & Partners as a general stores assistant, gaining his first exposure to packaging materials. Until the 1960s Moshal Gevisser was a well-known distributor of a wide range of household and hardware goods, as well as packaging materials. Sam Abelheim was appointed managing director of Moshal Gevisser's packaging and hardware divisions until the company was sold in 1969. "I realised the empire was about to crumble so I set about pursuing a career in specialised packaging," says Abelheim. He was approached to join Transvaal Paper, a company which required major reorganisation. When Moshal Gevisser came onto the market Transvaal Papers snapped up its packaging interests and followed this up with a series of acquisitions, establishing the company as a major force in packaging.
Abelheim's son Phillip joined him nearly 20 years ago and was largely responsible for setting up the plastics division and now the bubble-pack plant. "Although the company has grown over the years, it still has a family feel to it," says Sam Abelheim.
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