'It Was Like A Leap Of Faith.'

It’s No Simple Task To Launch A Start-up In An Industry Dominated By One Big Player. But Ceo And Executive Director Jeff Bi Created Great View Aseptic Packaging In 2003 And, Since Then, It’s Made Its Mark With Low Costs And High Value.

- Oliver Featherston

In 1985, fledgling Irish airline Ryanair began flying a single plane from Waterford in Ireland’s south-east to Gatwick Airport. The intent was to challenge the hegemony of British Airways and Aer Lingus, the two airlines that dominated the London-Ireland route. Just one year later, Ryanair introduced a flight between London Luton Airport and Dublin, a direct challenge to the duopoly. The key to the smaller airline’s success was price – to this day, the company is known for its low-fare, no-frills flights. But beyond disrupting the Britain-Ireland air travel industry, Ryanair’s initial success also, indirectly, disrupted the packaging industry in Asia and beyond, by serving as a source of inspiration for an aspiring entrepreneur in Beijing. JeffBi, today the CEO and Executive Director of Greatview Aseptic Packaging, was intrigued by the low-cost, high-value proposition of Ryanair. He realised there was a similar space in the liquid food packaging industry, which was (and still is, to an extent) dominated by the Swedish multinational Tetra Pak.

“I wondered in my mind how to create an alternative supply at a time when I was still working for Tetra Pak,” Jeff recalls. “I was trying to make Tetra Pak more competitive, by creating an internal start-up. That was the seed that had been planted at that time. Of course, I had to make sure this start-up was creating value to the customers and consumers, otherwise it wasn’t going to fly. So that’s how the whole thing got started.”