Chillicothe Paper Inc history

In 1921 the Mead Sales Company was established as a separate corporation to sell white paper produced by Mead mills and other United States and Canadian mills.

The plant began white paper production in 1923 and became a central Mead factory.

The Peerless Paper Company, located in Dayton, at the southwest corner of Webster and Idylwild and acquired in 1925 by Mead Pulp and Paper Co., with principal operating plants in Chillicothe.

In 1927 The Mead Paperboard Corporation was founded as a holding company for the paperboard operations, including the Sylvia Paperboard Company, The Harriman Company, The Southern Extract Company, and the Chillicothe Company.

The Mead Corporation was incorporated on February 17, 1930, and George Mead was appointed president.

Four members of this organization of master craftsmen, Henry Heuman, Carl P. Knab, John N. Taylor and Frank R. Somers, were chosen to make the survey, and they began their work on the sixth day of June, 1932.

In 1938 Mead entered two joint ventures in an effort to reduce its dependence on imported pulp and to enter the kraft linerboard business.

In 1945 Mead's assets had risen only $2.1 million from a prewar figure of $37 million.

Mead saw a rapid succession of presidents after Fergusen, who in 1948 became chairman of the board and handed the presidency on to Charles R. Van de Carr, Jr.

WVPP purchased a Brazilian paper box maker in 1953.

Demand for white printing papers began its first large increase in decades in 1954 as a population boom and renewed prosperity increased consumption of printed materials.

The specialty paper division, which produced papers for filters and insulation, was started with the purchase of Hurlburt Paper Company of South Lee, Massachusetts in 1957.

At the end of World War II, West Virginia Pulp & Paper Company had produced commodity grades of paper for a few hundred customers, but by 1959 it had its own sales force selling a variety of finished paper products to a customer base of 11,000.

WVPP exported negligibly until 1960, when 3 percent of sales went overseas.

The timing of the expansion speeded WVPP's recovery; by 1962 demand began to catch up to the capacity added in recent years.

Mead and the FTC settled in 1965 when Mead signed a consent decree, agreeing to sell off seven of its plants over five years and place a ten-year moratorium on paperboard acquisitions.

Mead sold off facilities such as the corrugated-shipping-container plant it had built at a cost of $3.5 million in Edison, New Jersey in 1967, but which had never made a profit.

With the retirement of Chairman Howard E. Whitaker and President George H. Pringle in 1968, the new president, James W. McSwiney, began to acquire businesses that were unrelated to papermaking.

In 1969 the company changed its name to Westvaco Corporation.

Wage and price controls were lifted altogether in 1974, allowing the industry to pass on production costs.

Mead's corrugated-paper business was concentrated in Stevenson, Alabama in 1975.

In 1977 the consolidation of the box-making business became problematic as two small Pennsylvania paper-box makers, Franklin Container Corporation, of Philadelphia, and Tim-Bar Corporation, filed a $1.2 billion antitrust suit against Mead and eight other box makers.

Business improved in 1984, as Mead's electronic information-retrieval services became profitable.

Carr, William H.A., Up Another Notch: Institution Building at Mead, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989.

After losing almost $200 million developing the special paper, Mead closed its Cycolor division in December 1990.

In 1991, Mead completed a $580 million expansion of this mill, which added 370,000 tons of coated board annually.

In mid-1992 Mason announced the start of a three-year performance-improvement plan that aimed to increase both productivity and customer satisfaction.

Almost one-quarter of Westvaco's 1996 revenues were generated outside the United States, and John A. Luke, Jr., set a goal to increase that figure to one-third within ten years.

Chillicothe's mill has changed hands a few times since Mead merged with Westvaco in 2001.

"MeadWestvaco Will Eliminate 600 Jobs to Cut Costs," New York Times, August 6, 2004.

MeadWestvaco sold the mill to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in 2005.