Pakistan: The Jute King

Pakistan’s entire economy is tightly interwoven with jute, which is second only to cotton as the world’s most widely used natural plant fiber. Last week Pakistan’s vital jute industry was snarled in a strike of nearly 60,000 workers who are demanding higher wages. Some mills were the scenes of clashes, and others resolutely evicted all workers. The mood was different at the mills of one jute maker, who has retained the good will of his striking workers by continuing to provide them with their regular fringe benefits of inexpensive company housing and rice at below-market prices.

Such shrewdness irked other mill-owners, but it came as little surprise. Gul Mohamed Adamjee, 44, has not only made his mills a South Asia showcase of enlightened management (Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have visited them) but has propelled himself into the industry’s top position as Pakistan’s “Jute King.” His Adamjee Jute Mills Ltd. produce a third of Pakistan’s jute goods and consume more raw jute than all of the mills in Britain, which ranks second to Pakistan in the manufacture of jute products.

Bags & Tea. In an industrial complex near Dacca, East Pakistan, some 20,-000 Adamjee workers annually produce 70 million burlap bags and 90 million square yards of cloth to be used in products as diverse as automobile seats and jute suits. Nearby, Adamjee has just opened a new factory that will ensure even greater use of Pakistan’s jute crop by producing particle board out of jute stems, providing a low-cost wood substitute for lumber-poor Pakistan. He is also almost single-handedly diversifying Pakistan’s industry, using jute profits to build a $2.1 million cotton mill, a $6.3 million sugar refinery, a tea company and a vegetable-oil plant in other locations.

Until the Moslem-Hindu partition that created Pakistan in 1947, the Adamjee family owned a jute mill near Calcutta and ran a thriving export business. Then partition left Pakistan with 42% of the world’s jute crop and no jute mills. To Adamjee, a Moslem, his duty was clear. He liquidated his substantial holdings in India, moved his entire family to Pakistan, where the grateful government helped him finance the new nation’s first jute mill. Today, the family’s assets are $75 million. In West Pakistan, Adamjee’s two brothers have constructed a $6.3 million cotton mill, a $5.2 million paperboard mill and a chemical factory. A family holding company, Adamjee Sons, Ltd., established and owns Pakistan’s second-largest insurance company and a major bank with 120 branch offices.

Mohamed’s Mosque. “I suppose I am a millionaire,” says Adamjee, “a poor Pakistani millionaire.” He has attempted to repay Pakistan’s hospitality by establishing a $420,000 science college and contributing $100,000 a year to charity. As for his workers, whom he expects to see back on the job soon, Adamjee pays them double time for overtime, also provides a pension plan, free medical care and schooling. On the company grounds at the Dacca complex, the benevolent boss has built a house of worship that his workers have respectfully nicknamed the “Adamjee Mosque.”