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Some Corrugated and
Containerboard History: Part One
By Ralph Young
TECHNICAL CORNER
This summer an associate member
that was taking on new salespeople
outside our industry used ASKRalph
for his recollections of mergers,
acquisitions, and consolidations
during the last thirty years. So
for those of you who are new
to this industry we submit this
legacy for you. For those of us that
are veterans, a few memories.
Please feel free to correct or add
information and we will update this
genealogy with your input in Part
Two of this series.
Ours is a rich history of single
entrepreneurs and partners taking
risks in very local venues. The
beginnings were not corporations;
it was very fragmented and very
independent. It might have been as
simple as a straw farmer seeking a
higher return on his crop (an early
fibre source for medium) than as a
feedstock for cattle. And, he would
partner with paper maker and a box
manufacturer that was moving out
of wooden crates into corrugated
“packaging.” It is only over the years
that larger and more geographically
focused companies came to acquire
the local and regional business
operations.
St. Regis:
On August 1, 1984 The Champion
International Corporation and the St.
Regis Corporation announced jointly
that they had signed a definitive
agreement to merge the two big paper
companies in a deal valued at $1.7
billion in cash and stock. The merger
would create the nation’s biggest
paper producer in terms of sales,
far outstripping the Georgia-Pacific
Corporation, the current leader. It
would also challenge the International
Paper Company for the top spot in the
industry in terms of pulp and paper
tonnage produced.
St. Joe:
The paper mill at the corporate
headquarters in Florida was
most profitable in the 1960s with
products being directly marketed to
independents, trade partners, and
company owned box plants. However,
an extended period of down time
(9-months) due to market conditions
in 1996 signaled the beginning of the
end for the mill. After nearly sixty
years, St. Joe decided to get out of the
paper business. The mill was sold in
1996 to Florida Coast Paper for $390
million and was able to operate and
produced paper until another decline
of the container board market. The
mill closed August 16, 1998 and did
not reopen. The mill was gone by
2003.
In November 1995 St. Joe announced
a deal to sell 16 box plants and its
pulp and paper mill for $390 million,
taking a big step to divest its noncore
assets. Box USA, owned by the Four
M Corporation of Valhalla, N.Y., the
largest privately held corrugated box
maker in the nation at that time,
acquired the East Coast box plants. It
is also bought the pulp and paper mill
in Port St. Joe, Fla., in a joint venture
with the Stone Container Corporation
of Chicago. After the sales, St. Joe
Paper is left with one million acres of
forest land and property in Florida,
among other assets.
Gaylord
Gaylord Container was a by-product
of the hostile takeover of Crown
Zellerbach by Sir James Goldsmith
in July 1985, which resulted in
the break-up of the San Francisco-
based forest products corporation
in May 1986. The more profitable
manufacturing assets (fine paper
mills) were sold to the James River
Corporation of Richmond, Virginia
(which became Fort James in 1997,
and was acquired by Georgia-Pacific
in 2000). The less profitable container
division (brown paper) became
“Gaylord Container,” and after a
brief period as a limited partnership,
was sold in November 1986 for
$260 million to a group of Midwest
investors led by Warren Hayford and
Marvin Pomerantz They headed Mid-
America Packaging, a single kraft
paper mill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas,
acquired from Weyerhaeuser in
December 1985 for $28 million.
Soon after the acquisition of the
former Crown Zellerbach assets, the
headquarters of Gaylord Container
were moved from California to
Illinois.
The company was originally named
after the Gaylord container, a bulk-
size corrugated box by a company
of the same name, based in Gaylord,
Michigan. The company was acquired
by Crown Zellerbach in 1955, which
renamed its brown paper operations
the “Gaylord Container Division.”
In 2002, Inland acquired the Gaylord
Container Corporation.
Container Corporation of
America:
CCA was founded in 1926. In 1968,
CCA merged with Montgomery
Ward & Company, Inc., in a move
that was largely intended to thwart
takeover bids against either company.
continued on page 52
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