From Muqaddas to Metaplatics - A Family Story of Success
By C. Naseer Ahmad

In this wonderful world, each family has a story to tell about the accomplishments of its members. Among the many stories of success in my family is the story of “from Muqaddas to Metaplastics.”

The purpose of narrating such stories is not to gloat but to be mindful of the possibilities that can be realized and the virtues of hard work as well as the benefits of optimism. Maybe this story will prompt you to think about someone in your family whom you want to encourage if they are depressed or downhearted.

“Today, something we do will touch your life,” was an advertisement line from the once mighty chemical giant Union Carbide. Metaplastics based in Pijnacker, Netherlands, doesn’t have such an advertisement nor the deep pockets that Union Carbide once had. But, when you consider what this little company does, it won’t be wrong to claim that something its owners Imran Z. Choudhry and his brother Amri A. Choudhry, who happen to be my first cousins, do every day has touched the lives of millions living in Europe in a humble way.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Metaplastics produced about 20 million hangers per month, which on an annual basis would approximate 240 million hangers. Covering a range of about 1,200 kilometers, Metaplastics supplies plastic hangers to customers in Scandinavian countries, Eastern and Western Europe as well as Southern Europe.

Without hangers, department stores are hard pressed to show their merchandise to their customers who will undoubtedly touch a hanger to try out clothes. The humble hanger is a product that has become an essential part of life in large parts of the modern world.

In each family, I guess, there possibly can be those who never met success despite their hard work and repeated efforts. Nobody is born a loser, in my view. It’s just that either one factor or another prevented them from crossing the finish line.

My late Uncle Zaffar A. Choudhry, who was my father’s younger brother, at one stage of his life was among those whom success as an entrepreneur had eluded for many years. He was really the pioneer in business in our family, which primarily had doctors, engineers, teachers, and plain old-fashioned farmers.

Uncle Zaffar followed another of my father’s younger brother Uncle Basharat Ahmad, who was serving as a Defense Ministry official in the Pakistan Embassy in London. In the 1950s, United Kingdom was a welcoming place for young Pakistanis because there was a labor shortage for rebuilding the economy after World War II. He was joined by my father’s youngest brother Mubashar Ahmad also.

With his bright mind and hard work, Uncle Zaffar could have a very successful life in UK had he chosen to stay there. But he was smitten by the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, so he returned to Pakistan in 1961. During a little over a decade in Pakistan, Uncle Zaffar was engaged in several entrepreneurial events. Despite his strenuous efforts none of them succeeded and he piled up a lot of debt.

To start over again, Uncle Zaffar returned to the UK in 1972 and in 1974 planned to have his family join him there. Although he was a UK citizen and had the right to relocate his family to London, the immigration bureaucracy got in his way. Desperate to be with his family, Uncle Zaffar took the advice of a friend to temporarily relocate to The Hague and so he asked his wife and children to join him there.

Reunification of the family and Uncle Zaffar gave them much needed satisfaction and removed the anxieties of separation. But they did not know the extreme hardships they would soon be enduring in an unfamiliar country with a language they did not understand or speak yet.

A life-changing event in the form a massive heart attack struck Uncle Zaffar at the most inopportune time when the oldest of the four children Imran Choudhry was barely twelve years old. Had he not survived, there would have been neither “Muqaddas” nor “Metaplastics” and the family would have been left precariously perched in a foreign country.

The adage “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” was perhaps made for my uncle and his family. They held together with resolve and purpose, despite the difficulties that got in the way.

Burdened by the thought of not leaving his family wanting, even during his long medical disability, Uncle Zaffar was continuously in search of a way to provide for his family. Eventually he came up with an idea to exploit his knowledge about how to make plastic products for a niche market, and so in 1976, the company ‘Muqaddas’ was born. Religious artwork in the form of clocks and wall decorations began selling like hotcakes making up for all the losses. Within a short period, he paid off all his debts to creditors in Pakistan.

During the 1980s and early 1990s business was booming with Muqaddas souvenirs depicting holy sites of Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Karbala adorning homes in almost every continent during the peak demand period.

The character of a human being is tested not only by hardships but also sometimes by opportunities and promises of good fortune. When he and his family realized that the market for religious souvenirs was maturing with the rise of new competitors, Uncle Zaffar sought the advice of another friend who was in the business. However, adopting this advice was unacceptable to Uncle Zaffar as he did not want to be in direct competition with his friend.

In 1993, Uncle Zaffar’s company started to focus more on production of plastic household products and products for the agricultural industry.

On Fathers’ Day in 1994, Uncle Zaffar passed away and the torch was passed on to the next generation – his two sons.

In 1995, Imran and Amri changed the company’s trade name into METAPLASTICS. A contraction of the Latin word META (more) and PLASTICS to align with its changing products.

It is often said that behind every successful man is a strong woman. Narrating the story of my uncle without mentioning his loving wife Auntie Nusrat who stood by him during the most challenging times in life is not fair. It is because of her steadfastness which not only provided support to Uncle Zaffar but also helped to nurture four children in the Netherlands - which was once a foreign country to them all.

As days turned into years, the young boys of yesteryears became masters of their destiny. Now for about 30 years both brothers have kept their factory humming. My uncle and my father might be smiling from the heavens above on their success.