American Forest & Paper Association Releases February 2018 Containerboard Report

Net sales in the fourth quarter were $2,858 million compared to $3,012 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 reflecting higher beverage can volumes in Americas Beverage and favorable foreign currency translation of $42 million, offset by the pass through of $145 million in lower material costs and lower volumes across most other businesses. Income from operations was $259 million in the fourth quarter compared to $229 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Segment income in the fourth quarter of 2023 was $382 million compared to $292 million in the prior year fourth quarter reflecting higher beverage can volumes in Americas Beverage and the contractual recovery of prior years' inflationary cost increases in European Beverage, both more than offsetting the under-absorption of fixed costs.

WestRock Company announced an expansion of its CanCollar® family of multipack solutions with the introduction of CanCollar® X, a fiber-based solution for sustainable large format canned beverage packaging enabling as much as fifty percent material reduction compared to fully-enclosed traditional packaging. As the newest addition to the family of solutions automated by the patented CanCollar Fortuna® platform, CanCollar® X uses a similar fiber-based, glue-free minimalist design preferred by consumers to maximize can visibility, is comfortable for consumers to handle and optimizes the use of material to bundle multipacks for larger formats. “Whether it’s beer, soft drinks, or sparkling water, across the globe large multipacks of cans are packaged in shrink film,” said Chris Davidson, vice president, Sustainability at WestRock. “With CanCollar® X we have an opportunity to significantly reduce materials when compared to fully-enclosed cartons and replace hard-to-recycle plastic shrink wrap with recyclable fiber-based packaging, improving circularity at impressive scale.”

Clearwater Paper Corporation announced that it has had to temporarily suspend its operations in Lewiston, Idaho due to uncertainty in natural gas supply and damage caused by extreme cold weather. The company is restarting equipment and production at the facility as weather conditions permit. “We are focused on the safety of our employees and protecting our assets during this period of extremely cold temperatures in the region,” said Arsen Kitch, president and chief executive officer. “We are in the process of repairing equipment and resuming our overall operations.” The company expects to provide an update on the anticipated impacts of the outage in a future announcement.