News

Paul Dolan

Job Title: Chairman and Chief Executive of fridge-e (manufacturer of chilled food packaging)
Age: 37

UNTIL LAST YEAR Paul Dolan was CEO and technical director of Friobox, which produced packaging for transporting chilled goods to companies in the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries.

He has since left, after a boardroom battle over whether to locate the company in London or Barcelona. At that time, the company had signed a contract with a major courier and was about to float on the stock market with another company, Aerospace Composite Structures, with a valuation of £100m.

But the start-up folded recently.

'Since then I have started a second company, called Fridge-e, which focuses on providing packaging for the food industry in the UK allowing 36 hours of transportation time while food is kept chilled or frozen.'

After several months of product development, the new firm is already supplying to the specialist food industry. 'The move has given me the freedom to develop the product and the company as I want.'

Over the last two years, Dolan has also been working on a further venture providing school uniforms through a website he set up with a team including an engineering friend and a small, family-run school uniform distributor.

The site - www.schooluniformsonline.co.uk - is making profits which are being pumped back in to improve the site, he says. 'It has been fantastically successful. Our latest contract was in California, and we have also sold in Brazil, Australia, Germany and the rest of mainland Europe.'