Gemini: 5000 containers per month from all over the world

Global – It’s a model for how a recycling business that starts small can grow into something big.

In 1991, Surendra Borad Patawari founded Gemini Corporation; last Saturday, Borad Patawari, together with his family and some 700 invitees, celebrated the company’s 25th anniversary in Antwerp where it all began and where this major plastics recycler and trader has always been headquartered. During the past quarter of a century, Gemini has become a big driver of the local economy, in particular the Port of Antwerp.

In its first month, the company shipped one container of plastic scrap; nowadays, some 5000 containers of steel scrap, plastics scrap, rubber scrap and other industrial grade scraps are shipped from all over the world from over 100 seaports every month. The company now boasts a Euro 500 million turnover and has associate companies and sub-offices in 16 countries, including China, India, the USA and the UAE.

Partly thanks to scrap majors such as Gemini, the Port of Antwerp has seen spectacular growth, confirmed the port’s chair Marc Van Peel in a speech to honour Gemini and Borad Patawari. ‘In 2015, the number of containers grew by 7% and is expected to climb further in 2016, he enthused. ‘In the past 25 years, the volume of cargo passing through the Port of Antwerp has doubled from 100 million tonnes to 200 million tonnes.’

Manjeev Singh Puri, India’s ambassador in Brussels, told invitees that ‘no other city in the EU has so much trade with India than Antwerp’.

During the celebration, it was also highlighted that the Global Business Leader Award 2015 from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India had been conferred on Gemini’s chairman Borad Patawari.