Norampac Selling Plants to Metro

Norampac Inc. agreed to sell all the assets of its Paper Recovery Division to Metro Waste Paper Recovery Inc. They include facilities acquired from Cropwn Packaging earlier this year.

The assets include eight paper stock plants, located in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. Metro Waste operates two plants in the Toronto area, a plant in Ottawa, Ontario, and two facilities in New York. All the plants handle a wide range of recovered fiber, and have baling, sorting and storage capacity. Metro markets around 450,000 metric tons per year.

The transaction is expected to close early next year.

The transaction will allow Norampac to increase its current equity participation in Metro Waste from 27.5% to 46%. Following this transaction the two other shareholders of Metro Waste, namely Paperboard Industries International Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cascades Inc. and Metauro Group Holdings Inc. will each own 27% of Metro Waste.

Norampac owns eight containerboard mills and 25 corrugated products plants in the United States, Canada, Mexico and France. With an annual production capacity of more than 1.6 million short tons, Norampac is the largest containerboard producer in Canada and the 8th largest in North America.