It is a fact that some multi-million pound businesses are based on products which the everyday consumer will either never come across or pay scant attention to. Packaging is a prime example. Naturally we are far more interested in what is inside the box or under the plastic than the what is wrapped around it.

Without it, the products could be damaged or soiled and the packaging industry is a multi-million pound international business.

Polythene wrapping is a key part of the sector and by nature is a turbulent business with a high turnover but lower margins, a fact which James Woollard is only too well aware of.

Mr Woollard is managing director of a new firm, Polythene UK, based in Witney. but he and his team have a wealth of experience built up over more than a decade.

In fact, Mr Woollard, 31, has spent his career to date in the polythene packaging industry starting work at United Polythene in Carterton at the age of 18 as a shrink gun repair man.

But even before that he was working - at 14 he was making appointments for double glazing companies and selling holiday insurance over the telephone.

He said: "When we did work experience, most of the lads just took a couple of weeks off. I earned £500 from sales."

At the time Mr Woollard joined United Polythene and started making his way through the sales ranks, it had a turnover of about £1m. It was eventually sold to the Macfarlane Group by which time it was turning over £5m.

Mr Woollard was approached by the company's main supplier, Group Barbier based in St Etienne, France to become its UK sales manager.

In 2003 Macfarlane sold United Polythene to Tyco and the Carterton factory was closed. Mr Woollard then decided to set up a new company, Polyplast, based in Witney. He recruited the sales team from the Carterton operation and quickly built up the business by developing the original client base.

Polyplast was a polythene broker and was supplied by the Polythene Industries factory in Liverpool. When Mr Woollard heard the plant was struggling, he and his co-directors made the radical decision to take it over. It was a move that was to backfire spectacularly.

He explained: "Liverpool was operating four days a week and we made the catastrophic decision in the first month to increase the shift pattern to seven-days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day.

"We took the order book from £4m a year to £12m but once we hit capacity we could not keep going. The cash had been available as were growing but as soon as we plateaued the bills started catching up with us."

As a result, by April 2006, the business was losing £1m a year and was suffering major quality problems.

Mr Woollard admits that was the point when a painful decision should have been taken but, like many others in that situation, he believed that there was a way out of it.

"We cut back to four days a week and we could have laid off staff and got the business back on track but we didn't. We bumbled along for a few months - all we could do was put prices up in the short-term."

Eventually Mr Woollard took the decision he knew he should have made months earlier and pulled out of the business altogether.

Realising that it was possible to run a perfectly profitable operation without the millstone of a manufacturing operation around his neck, he started Polythene UK last July in the same offices from which he had run Polyplast.

He once again hired sales team who he had worked with for the best part of 12 years and who he considers to be the best in the industry and sourced manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the PVC Group, which had taken over the Liverpool factory, went into adminstration and Mr Woollard bought the original database of names and addresses built up over the previous decade.

Mr Woollard said: "Not only do I have the telephone numbers for a £12m business but I also have the continuity."

Needless to say, there had to be some bridges built with customers and a lot of explanation, particularly as prices of polythene have risen dramatically thanks mainly to spiralling oil prices.

As a result, Mr Woollard has sourced a thinner type of material, marketed as Poly-lite, which is just as strong but stretches over items such as new sofas and pallets to fit, rather than having to be tied down.

The other pressure on the industry is environmental with legislation being ever more stringent and major users having to pay more taxes as a result.

Poly-lite will help with that as well as providing the company with a higher margin per tonne and, combined with his confidence in his loyal sales team, Mr Woollard believes he will have a turnover of £5m in his first year which should yield profit of about £150,000.

As well as the in-house team, Mr Woollard is also supported by wife Kylie, an accountant, who has been burning the midnight oil working on the finances, up until the point she gave birth to the couple's first child.

Despite the volatile, occasionally chaotic nature of his business, Mr Woollard is infectiously upbeat about the industry and the company he now heads up.

"I love coming to work. It is an absolute joy to do be able to do this job."