Company Overview
Highlights
Largest paper and forest products company in the world.
Owns 300,000 acres of land in the U.S. and owns/owns the rights to harvest almost 250,000 acres of Brazil forests.
Reforests every acre of forestland harvested.
One of the 30 companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Has been selling off non-core operations to focus on its uncoated paper and packaging businesses, selling approximately $11 billion in assets in 2006 and billions more in 2007.
International Paper (IP) has been turning trees into paper since 1898. The company's businesses include paper, packaging, forest products, and specialty chemicals. IP employs people in nearly 40 countries and exports its products to more than 120 countries. Paper companies need trees, and IP has lots of them. The company, which now owns 300,000 acres in the U.S., sold off 6.3 million acres of U.S. forestland to get rid of its non-core businesses. The company also owns, manages, or has an interest in another 250,000 million acres in Brazil.
Focusing on its core uncoated paper and packaging businesses, IP divesting more than $4 billion between 2000 and 2005, and another $11 billion in 2006. Early in 2006, IP sold 218,000 acres of U.S. forest to The Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for approximately $300 million. The same year, IP pulled in more than $6 billion by selling 4.2 million acres of forestland to an investor group under the Rseource Management Service umbrella and 900,000 to another investor group led by TimberStar. And that wasn't it for '06: IP received another $140 million for the 275,00 acres of the Adirondacks it sold to Lyme Timber Company. Then, it sold its businses in coated and supercalendared papers to Verso Paper for $1.4 billion and its Brazilian coated papers business to Stora Enso for $420 million. As part of its efforst to consolidate, International Paper sold more Brazilian holdings and traded more tahn $1 billion of the country's land and factories with Votorantim Celulose e Papel. And the unloading continued.
International Paper completed three major divestitures totaling $12.2 billion in April 2007, including a deal with Georgia-Pacific to get rid of much of the company's wood products business. Also in 2007, IP sold its kraft papers business to Stone Arcade Acquisition for $215 million (some of which will be paid off over the next five years) and announced plans to close its financially ailing paperboard mill in Indiana.
All of these sales, along with the acquistion of half of Ilim Holding for $650 million, have allowed the company to focus on its strongest sectors and reduce debt from 7.4 billion from mid-2005 to 2007.