Supermarket bag distributor Uniquely Raw expects talks under way with French and Singaporean buyers will significantly increase orders for its environmentally friendly ‘Trolley Bag’.
The Dunsborough-based business has made the most of the $200,000 ‘Bag Smart’ community awareness campaign to reduce plastic bags in Australia with an agreement to market the product as an alternative to waste producing options.
The market for the product is largest in Europe as plastic bags have already been phased out there, according to Uniquely Raw owner Debbie Thompson, who started the business as a family owned enterprise about two years ago
“We expect this to be a turning point for the business,” Ms Thompson told WA Business News.
Uniquely Raw has now grown into a nationwide operation, with distributors in Cairns, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
In July last year Ms Thompson formed an agreement with Enterprise in The Community, which runs a nationwide project called ‘Bag Smart’, aimed at reducing plastic bags in Australia with funding from the Department of Environment, Waste Management Board of Western Australia and Foodland Ltd.
“The business has really taken off since then,” Ms Thompson said.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that more than six billion plastic bags are used, every year, with less than 1 per cent of those re-used by households.
Of those six billion bags, 3.6 billion are from supermarkets, and most of these take between 20 and 1,000 years to break down in the environment, Ms Thompson said.
In July this year Uniquely Raw paid $60,000 for Brisbane company Retailquip Pty Ltd, which owns the distribution rights in Australia for the Austrian-developed Trolley Bag, after previously being the WA distributor for the product, which is made in China.
“By August 2008 we will be debt free from external loans funding and will be self-supporting,” Ms Thompson said.
Uniquely Raw will have contracts with at least 14 distributors and directly employ about 10 people, she said.
