Glatfelter history

In 1874, for example, the mill was moved farther north along the Codorus Creek, and next to it the company constructed a new building costing $200,000 and containing an 82-inch paper machine.

In 1880 Glatfelter entered into an agreement with Pusey and Jones Company of Delaware to build a 102-inch fourdrinier machine, allowing the mill to produce a considerably wider roll of paper.

Schoeller & Hoesch was founded in 1881 as a pulp producer, then evolved into a leading producer of engineered papers; it was similar to Glatfelter in its focus on maintaining leading positions in a number of niche growth markets.

When the town changed its name in 1882 to Spring Grove, the company thus became the Spring Grove Mill.

By 1885 this new production helped the company surpass $500,000 in total sales, and four years later the number of employees reached 110.

Glatfelter's new fourdrinier machine was until 1887 the largest in the world, and the extremely wide paper rolls made by the machine helped him gain new customers.

With its new pulp-processing method, the company in 1892 was able to make one of its most important changes – the suspension of newsprint production and the subsequent focus on high-quality paper for books, lithographs, and business forms.

For this purpose, another soda-process pulp mill was installed in 1895, and by the turn of the century the company had become an industry leader of high-quality uncoated printing paper.

He had already worked at the mill for 19 years when, in 1906, the business was incorporated as P.H. Glatfelter Company.

In 1918, in order to manage the mill's growing need for wood, he established Glatfelter Wood Pulp Company, a wholly owned subsidiary, with more than 10,000 acres of timberland in southern Maryland.

William Glatfelter was responsible for instituting a number of other major projects, many of which were completed in the early 1920s.

Most spectacular was the new fourdrinier paper machine, installed in 1922, which was capable of making rolls of fine paper 170 inches wide.

Born on May 11, 1924, in Glen Rock, York County, Pennsylvania, Glatfelter began researching history in the York County Historical Society (now York Heritage Trust) collections as a secondary school student.

In 1928, just a year before the great stock market crash, annual production at P.H. Glatfelter Company had reached 50 million pounds, and the number of employees stood at 300.

That year, in keeping with the company's policy of "maintaining a modern, efficient mill," Philip H. Glatfelter II, William's son, introduced a new, ten-year modernization program, which included the installation in 1930 of an even larger, 190-inch four-drinier machine.

P. H. Glatfelter II, president until January 1, 1970, guided the company through the postwar economic boom and started a new effort at reforestation and environmental stewardship.

The company entered a new product line in 1979 with its purchase of Bergstrom Paper Company, a leading manufacturer of recycled printing paper, with mills in Neenah, Wisconsin, and West Carrollton, Ohio.

Thomas C. Norris, named president in 1980, was the first person outside the Glatfelter family to run the company.

Glatfelter also served a term (1986-88) as president of the association.Glatfelter's influence was felt at Gettysburg College on various fronts, first and foremost through his teaching.

In 1987, he received the Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching.

In 1988 Glatfelter's chief financial officer, M.A. Johnson II, explained, "Our emphasis is on profit, not on volume.

Glatfelter received a huge blow in late 1992 when Philip Morris Co. announced that it would single-source its domestic cigarette paper from Kimberly-Clark Corp.

In 1998 Glatfelter responded to these pressures by announcing layoffs at Ecusta's Pisgah Forest facility, with head count reduced by about 215, generating annual savings of approximately $8.4 million.

Briggs, Rosland, "Spring Grove, Pa.-based Tobacco Paper Company Rolls Toward Recovery," Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 1999.

George H. Glatfelter II, who had been senior vice-president, was named the new president and CEO, with Norris remaining chairman until his retirement in May 2000.

Further changes came in 2001 when Glatfelter elected to exit from tobacco papers altogether in order to focus its full attention on specialty papers and engineered products.

In fact, sales fell still further in 2002, declining to $553.6 million, as the industry downturn dragged on.

After selling 25,500 acres of timberland in Maryland for $38 million in early 2003, Glatfelter that September announced plans to shut down a paper-making machine and the deinking process at its Neenah facility and in the process cut the staff by more than half, or 190 positions.

Then in March the company launched an ambitious strategic plan, aiming to cut annual costs by $50 million and push revenues over the $1 billion mark by 2004.

By 2005 Glatfelter was estimating that its share of the remediation costs were likely to range between $61 million and $137 million, over a period of as much as 20 years or more.

In April 2006 the company acquired the carbonless and specialty papers business of NewPage Corporation for approximately $80 million.

Courtesy of Special Collections/Musselman Library, Gettysburg CollegeCharles H. Glatfelter, Franklin Professor of History emeritus and former chair of the history department at Gettysburg College, died on February 6, 2013, after a short illness.

In October 2018, Glatfelter completes the sale of the Specialty Papers business unit.