Trade Names:JJ O'Toole began in paper, went into plastic and then, with the ban on polythene bags, returned to their core business, writes Rose Doyle.

Fergus O'Toole is the son of Jack O'Toole who was the son of the JJ O'Toole who set up the company of the same name in Limerick's Catherine Street in 1914.

JJ O'Toole 2007 lays strong claim to being the country's oldest paper merchants, is in the safe hands of a third O'Toole generation and busier than ever it was in Raheen Industrial Park, Limerick. The company's made many a move and change in its 93 years but none more speedily than those happening today.

It takes two to tell the JJ O'Toole story. Fergus O'Toole, who ran the company from 1986 (when he took over from his father, Jack, who'd taken over from his father, JJ, in 1932) until 2005 gives the inside track on family and historical detail.

Vicki O'Toole, who took over as MD in 2005 and is married to Fergus, gives an overview and business details with elan and energy.

In the beginning, when JJ (John Joseph) got things going in 1914, the company produced mainly paper; craft paper sheets and rolls, sugar, flour, drapery, millinery, sweet, fruit and grocery bags, greaseproof and parchment and tissues.

They produced nature tissue too - used to wrap bread and a precursor of today's micro perforated bags. As another string to their bow, the company produced twine.

Before 1914, according to Fergus, his grandfather JJ had been a sales rep with a company called Wood which was "in a similar line of business".

JJ O'Toole's early growth as a company coincided with that of the paper industry in Ireland. JJ became a director and shareholder in both Clondalkin and Killeen Paper Mills.

JJ and his wife Rose had two children; Frances (now deceased) a renowned singer and Fergus's father Jack. When JJ retired because of ill health in 1932 Jack, who was just finishing secondary school, abandoned hopes of a medical career to run the company for the next 54 years.

With Catherine Street the continuing hub of the business, JJ O'Toole Ltd had also, by the 1940s, a Dublin premises in Wicklow Street. In the 1950s they moved this to Sandwith Street and in 1971 to the JFK Industrial Estate. As the end of that decade approached the base in Catherine Street was closed and in 1978 JJ O'Toole moved to larger premises in Dooradoyle, Limerick.

Change, always a factor in the paper packaging business, produced a new kind of challenge in the 1960s. Vicki explains: "Polythene came along and grew to become a major product. Until then everything from matches to mattresses were packaged in paper. Grocers would buy their flour and sugar in bulk and would repackage for onward sale. One of Jack's proudest moment was when he secured an order for 50 tons of paper from O'Dea and Sons, manufacturers of Odearest mattresses."

JJ fitted slogans to the march of their advance, variously and through the years advertising as Paper and Twine Factors; Paper and Plastic Packaging, For Everything in Paper, and Your Packaging Partner since 1914.

Vicki tells how, before the advent of phones, cars and availability of newspapers, the O'Toole sales rep was welcomed as the bringer of news from Limerick to parts of the country as far flung as Donegal.

Rep Jack McCluskey (known as Spatts) would travel by train, bus, bike or hitch lifts to get to customers. Getting to Kilkee, for Spatts, meant a train journey to Ennis and biking it the rest of the way. Van driver Gabriel Judge, who retired in 1990, remembers making deliveries in a cart drawn by the sensitive Bronco, a horse which took fright every time Crannocks' clock on O'Connell Street struck.

Fergus, growing up, did his share of work for the company. He recalls how, in the 1960s, "everything was sold by weight, by tons and hundred weight, until polythene arrived in the late 1960s. It was less expensive than paper and, over time and with improvements in technology, it became possible to make lighter material.

"When everyone became upset about the pollutant factor there were arguments for and against; the greater bulk created by paper plus the fact of it being energy expensive. I don't totally share the view that polythene is nasty."

When time came for college Fergus did Business Studies in TCD. His sister Jacqueline joined the company in the early 1970s, Fergus joined in 1977 and his brother Eddie in 1984. When their father Jack retired in 1986 Fergus became MD.

JJ O'Toole's has a tradition for long tenure among its staff. There's a fair amount of generation following generation too with office manager Rachel Murphy (with the company since 1971) working today alongside daughter Ciara, who is sales representative. Ciara moved into the job when Tom O'Driscoll, after a 33 year career, died suddenly and to the continuing sadness of all.

Then there's accountant Tony Frawley, who inherited the job from his father Gerry in 1992, Joe O'Flynn and Leo Fitzgerald who've been there since 1970 and recently retired John Hayes who joined in 1977. General managers were inclined to stay on too; John Finucane was GM from the late 1930s until the early 1960s, Aidan Twomey followed him as GM until the late 1980s. Harry Brazier and Willie O'Brien, by the time they retired, had each spent more than 40 years with the company.

JJ O'Toole, through the years, supplied retail food (supermarkets) and retail non-food( clothes shops and so on ) with plastic bags. The introduction of the environmental levy on these in 2002 "virtually stopped the use of polythene overnight", Fergus explains. "It was a serious problem. We lost business and had find new directions."

Which they did. "The company had survived two World Wars," Vicki says, "but this proved an even greater challenge."

Distribution was centralised in a facility in Raheen Business Park and, when non-food retail customers (such as Brown Thomas) moved to paper JJ O'Toole began supplying them with what Fergus calls "ritzy", stylish bags.

By 2005 Fergus was ready to retire. "I've a couple of other interests and wanted to pursue them," he says. "Vicki in the meantime had developed great flair, she's got a fine sense of aesthetics and style and is technologically brilliant. She took over as MD in 2005 and we've raced ahead ever since."

"We've reverted to what we were in the beginning," Vicki says. "Over the years there had been a 70 per cent change to plastic products but since the new law in 2002 we've gone back to our roots with mainly paper-based products. We still do plastic but nothing like before. A lot of the really nice paper carrier bags you see around are ours."

With 26 employees, including graphic designers and seven reps on the road, Vicki says change in the business "is happening at dramatic speed. We are now able to offer a bespoke service".

With 3,000 customers in the 32 counties and more in the UK the company, Vicki says, "is the proud supplier of, among others, Brown Thomas, Newbridge Silverware, Louis Copeland, Hughes and Hughes, Cuisine de France, Vodafone and Unicare. We were the first packaging company to supply Brown Thomas and we're delighted to be supplying them still. It's a great business and I really enjoy it."

Fergus, for his part, says he's "obviously and keenly" interested in the company but that "it's Vicki's baby now. You can only have one boss in a business. I've had my turn and it's in the best hands now. "

He's not sure whether any of his and Vicki's children will go into the business but says, philosophically, that "time will tell. Certainly they'll cut their teeth elsewhere."