Brazilian pulp and paper giant Suzano on Tuesday announced it had closed on a $110 million deal to acquire two Pactiv Evergreen facilities in Pine Bluff and Waynesville, North Carolina.
The acquisition of the paper mill in Pine Bluff and the extrusion facility in Waynesville adds about 420,000 metric tons of integrated paperboard to Suzano’s annual production capacity, the company said in a news release. A long-term commercial agreement signed by the companies calls for Suzano to provide liquid packaging board for Pactiv Evergreen’s converting mills in North America.
“We aim to scale our operations to meet the growing global demand for paper-based packaging,” Fabio Almeida, CEO of Suzano Packaging U.S., said in the release. “Our successful track record of asset integration gives us confidence that we will be able to enhance operational efficiency, production scale, and safety standards at these units, opening up new opportunities for the employees and positively impacting the local communities of Pine Bluff and Waynesville.”
Pactiv said Suzano has agreed to offer employment to current employees at the Pine Bluff and Waynesville facilities. About 1,000 people work at the Pine Bluff mill, which produces liquid packaging board and cupstock used to make fresh beverage cartons, paper cups and other fiber-based food and beverage packaging.
Pactiv sold the facilities as part of a restructuring of the company’s beverage merchandising operations.
“The closing of this transaction marks an important milestone as we focus on our core North American converting operations,” Michael King, president and CEO of Pactiv, said in a statement. “I want to thank the employees at Pine Bluff and Waynesville for their years of dedication and commitment to Pactiv Evergreen and to our customers. In addition to facilitating our transition to a capital light business model, we expect the transaction to improve our profitability and cash flows and strengthen our balance sheet.”
The deal was first announced in July. Arkansas forestry expert Matthew Pelkki told Arkansas Business in August that both mills have the ability to produce more paper products than they have been.
“Suzano might look at this and say, we’re going to invest and modernize this mill,” he said. “That would be absolutely wonderful, and that’s exactly what I’m hoping is going to happen.”
The Pine Bluff mill supports about 2,200 other logging, trucking and support jobs beyond its gates.
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