PADDY Wright has taken over the operational side of the Jefferson Smurfit Group not long after the company's emergence from the worst downturn in its history and in the middle of the current downswing that few in the industry, Michael Smurfit and Paddy Wright included, foresaw.

Mr Wright has also taken over after a period when Smurfit's fortunes on the stock market have taken a battering, with the shares underperforming the Irish market by over 26 per cent in the past year. Investors believe the appointment of Wright to a position that allows Michael Smurfit to play a more strategic role is partly aimed at reassuring investors who have been frustrated with the group in the past couple of years.

Speaking to The Irish Times this week, a month after taking over a job which gives him ultimate control of Smurfit's day-to-day manufacturing operations - including the European operations headed by Dermot Smurfit and the Latin American operations headed by Alan Smurfit - Mr Wright is cautiously optimistic that the worst of the current downturn is over and that an improvement for the industry is in sight.

"When you are as big as we are, it's difficult to buck the downswing in the industry, when you're small it's easier to get into niche markets. What covers us and what makes us different from most of our peer group is that we operate in so many different economies. That undoubtedly helps in a cyclical situation.

"What also helps is that we are largely an integrated business. In the US we are almost 100 per cent integrated. In Europe, we are 75 per cent integrated. And nobody has a wider range of products than us That kind of variety helps where it doesn't help our competitors.

"Even in the worst of the downturn, we have always reported profits, we have never reported a loss - unlike some of our peer group," Mr Wright says.

But what of the criticism from some shareholders that Smurfit's ability to call the cycle in the packaging industry has been poor in recent years. "If you can always call the cycle then you're better off than Gungha Din," he says.

"We are always going to be partly at the mercy of product prices and the market, but there are things within our control to help us through the downswings better than our peer group. We can produce better quality products, we can look at our costs and give a better service. We can also look at how we manage the business - to be fair I think we do that well and it's part of my job to make sure that we continue to do that well.

"I don't think you can really call the cycle, it's all a question of volumes, capacity demand - it's like a big stew, you stir them up and see what you get. I don't think anybody in the industry calls, any worse or any better than anybody else.

Mr Wright conceded that finding niche markets in the downswing is an area where Smurfit was lacking. "That's one area where I'll be concentrating, it's an area where we may not have been as good as we should have been."

And on his relationship with the two Smurfit brothers - Dermot and Alan - who head up the European and Latin American operations, Mr Wright states quite plainly: "They report to me." He is quick to add, however, that decisions at Smurfit have always been taken on a collegial basis and that will not change.

Investor relations may not be Wright's primary area of responsibility - it's part of finance director Ray Curran and investor "relations executive Mark Kenny's beat - but he says this is one area of Smurfit's operations that has been deficient in the past.

"Investor relations was understated before and we were deficient in that area. But now we've taken steps to address it. We've been working hard on investor relations for the past 12 months and I think we've done a lot, we've appointed new brokers in London and investor relations advisers in the UK and the US, and hopefully the results will come through from that."

Mr Wright accepts that when it comes to investor relations, Smurfit has been regularly compared unfavourably against the likes of CRH, which has made a virtue of its proactive relations with its investors.

When asked if Smurfit is now focused on investor relations as it should be, he says: "We are now, but we've never done it before in such a focused way as CRH." Finance director Ray Curran - Smurfit's front man with the institutions - is spending an increasing amount of his time in investor relations but as Mr Wright puts it: "It takes six months to get something like this running and another six months to find, if what you're doing is right. I think, though, if you ask me the same question in a year's time you'll see a big change."

Already there have been fundamental changes to Smurfit's share register, he says, with new British investors holding 6 per cent more of the shares than six months ago - partly through the Tiger disposal and partly through a gradual flow of shares from Irish institutions.

But in the eyes of many investors, Smurfit is embarking on an intensive investor relations programme starting from a low base, although Mr Wright and his colleagues do not accept that last year's share buyback was either mistimed or mishandled.

"Back in August 1995, the outlook for the industry was good and there was a consensus in the industry to that effect. In retrospect, we bought in the shares at the peak of the cycle and that was unfortunate. It was the first time we did a buyback but nobody could have foreseen that the cycle would turn down as sharply and as quickly as it did."

In recent years, Paddy Wright has had responsibility for Smurfit's Irish and British operations, an area that for obvious reasons involved limited amounts of travel. In his new role, Mr Wright will be spending more time travelling and getting to grips with over 300 Smurfit installations worldwide.

Will that amount of travel mean that his twin passions - Manchester United and the Dubs - will suffer? Maybe, he says, but he is still determined to spend as much time as possible with his family at their Malahide home. Even the travel perks that go with his directorship of Aer Lingus do not entice him to far-flung climes. "I'll bed spending enough time travelling - weekends are for home."

Until three years ago, he was plain Mr Wright coaching St Sylvester's under-10's GAA team in Malahide. That level of commitment to the local GAA club has had to be reduced given the requirement of Smurfit, but "maybe I'll be back with the under-10s by the time my grandson is the right age".