Swift Consolidation Sweeps Paper Industry

According to Ray Curran, president and CEO of Smurfit-Stone, “The combination of these packaging businesses into one North American unit will generate approximately US$50 million annually in cost savings. In addition, by joining Smurfit-Stone’s containerboard system with St. Laurent capabilities we will create significant new opportunities to optimize our containerboard manufacturing costs. Finally, St. Laurent management has done an excellent job in the past 12 months of reducing costs and increasing production. We expect to continue with this progress.”