Green Bay Packaging Announces $500M Investment In Its Hometown

The owner of Green Bay Packaging announced Tuesday the construction of a $500 million state-of-the-art recycled paper mill.

Will Kress, whose grandfather founded what was then the Green Bay Box Company in 1933, said the current mill is 71 years old. It has been rebuilt three times, and has become “inefficient and too expensive to run,” he said.

Green Bay Packaging makes corrugated cardboard. As the popularity of online shopping has increased, so to has the demand for their product. The new mill will make 100-percent recycled cardboard when it is up and running by early 2021. It will be Wisconsin’s first new paper mill in 30 years.

It will be built next to the current mill, which will remain open until it is determined the new facility is meeting expectations. The company hopes to at least double the size of its current production.

Green Bay Packaging Executive Vice President Bryan Hollenbach said officials of the privately-owned company could have built their new mill at one of its other locations in another state.

“If you just look at the map, putting this in the lower Midwest is probably a more economically efficient decision to make,” Hollenbach said.

But he said the company decided to stay in its namesake city.

“We were confident that when we met with the state, the city, and the county, our approach was, ‘help us figure out a way to make this work in Wisconsin,’” he said.

Wisconsin’s Economic Development Corp. is offering between $58 million and $63 million in enterprise tax credits. The program gives incentives to companies to either stay in or relocate to Wisconsin on the basis that companies are supposed to meet job creation and retention criteria. In Green Bay, the company already employs 1,100 people, statewide Green Bay Packaging employs 1,500.

Walker said the investment is worth the incentives.

“We are talking about a half billion dollar investment to the state,” Walker said. “We are talking about retaining the existing jobs which are obviously sizeable and the addition of 200 jobs (that pay) just shy of $60,000 a year.”

The city of Green Bay and Brown County are also offering tax incentives.

“Not many things keep me up at night, but the loss of Green Bay Packaging would have been devastating,” Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt said.

Besides jobs, Schmitt said the company’s owners have done philanthropic work in the community.

“What we did was fair,” Schmitt told executives Tuesday. “Some tax incentives, we deeded you some land that will now go on the tax rolls and giving you a few streets we really didn’t want anyway.”

The Green Bay City Council will vote on the incentive package Tuesday, June 19.

Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach called the announcement “good news” after a stretch of years when paper jobs have been lost.

“Luckily we were presented an opportunity to actually be part of the solution,” Streckenbach said. “More importantly cementing it for generations which I think (is good) for the workers and the ancillary jobs, this is a long-term commitment.”

Hollenbach said the new mill is expected to last at least 50 years, adding that the new recycled paper facility will be “green” in other ways — it won’t use coal, instead using gas — a change that will reduce sulfur dioxide and particulate matter emissions by over 90 percent, according to the company. They also wont discharge water into the nearby Fox River.