Essity expands Wiping and Cleaning portfolio with acquisition of Legacy Converting, Inc.

ePac Flexible Packaging has launched in Australia, with its first manufacturing facility opening in Melbourne in the fourth quarter of 2021. Built entirely on breakthrough digital printing technology, ePac serves local brands of all sizes, with a particular focus on small and medium sized businesses producing snacks, confections, coffee, natural and organic foods, pet food, and nutritional supplements. ePac’s first production facility will open eight kilometres from the Melbourne CBD, at the new Newlands Road food manufacturing hub, located in the heart of Coburg’s thriving industrial district.

Packaging Corporation of America reported second quarter 2021 net income of $207 million, excluding special items. Second quarter net sales were $1.9 billion in 2021 and $1.5 billion in 2020. Commenting on reported results, Mark W. Kowlzan, Chairman and CEO, said, “Demand in our Packaging segment remained very strong. Our mills and plants continued to do an outstanding job of meeting our customers’ needs while managing through certain material and chemical availability issues, a tight labor market, various freight and logistics challenges, as well as the planned maintenance outages at four of our mills during the second quarter. The mills executed the planned outages extremely well and, with the help of the No. 3 machine at the Jackson Mill, provided our plants the necessary containerboard to achieve an all-time record for total box shipments. We were also able to build some much-needed inventory; however, our weeks-of-inventory supply was at a new low for this time of year ahead of an expected very busy second half. The sales groups in both the Packaging and Paper segments are doing a great job of implementing our previously announced price increases, and we continue to deliver on the numerous initiatives and capital projects to reduce costs and improve efficiencies across all of our mills and corrugated products plants. These efforts are extremely important as we continue to experience significant cost inflation across the Company as well as logistics challenges with both our inbound and outbound freight needs.”

Total boxboard production increased 2.9 percent when compared to July 2016, and increased 6.5 percent from last month. Unbleached Kraft Boxboard production increased over the same month as last year and increased compared to last month. Total Solid Bleached Boxboard & Liner production increased when compared to July 2016, and increased compared to last month. The production of Recycled Boxboard decreased compared to July 2016, and decreased when compared to last month.