Making Cardboard from the Recycled

choi

Chase Peterson-Withorn,  Thanks, Jeff Bezos!  By turning an endless supply of trash into an endless supply of boxes, billionaire Anthony Pratt is the unlikely beneficiary of the migration to online retailing. Forbes, Aug 17, 2015
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chas ... ff-americans-trash/
(His is "America’s biggest maker of fully recycled cardboard boxes * * * [put another way:] His privately held Pratt Industries is one of the fastest-growing players in America’s $35 billion corrugated packaging industry and the only big boxmaker using 100%-recycled paper")

Note:
(a) "In the past 15 months alone the company, based in Conyers,Ga, has invested nearly $450 million in America, most notably constructing a $260 million paper mill (the company’s fourth) next to the Ali-autographed box factory in Valparaiso[, Indiana]. The firm does $260 million in Ebitda (on $2 billion in sales),"
(i) Conyers, Georgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conyers,_Georgia
(twenty-four miles east of Atlanta; As of the 2000 census, the city population was 10,689; named after Dr [WD] Conyers, who bought and sold land here])
(ii) Valparaiso, Indiana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaiso,_Indiana
("Established in 1836 as Portersville, county seat of Porter County, it was renamed to Valparaiso (meaning 'Valley of Paradise' in Old-Spanish) in 1837 after Valparaíso, Chile, near which the county's namesake David Porter battled in the Battle of Valparaiso during the War of 1812")

About 40 miles from downtown Chicago.
(iii) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnings_before_interest,_taxes,_depreciation,_and_amortization
(EBITDA)

(b) "Pratt’s journey began at a single wasteful paper mill in Macon, Ga in 1991. That’s when he was dispatched to the US from Australia"

Macon, Georgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macon,_Georgia
(in central Georgia; in 1823 "officially named Macon. This was in honor of the North Carolina statesman Nathaniel Macon, because many of the early settlers hailed from North Carolina")

(c) "Unlike his rivals, who must operate mills close to timber sources and then send the paper to factories near cities, where it’s turned into boxes, Pratt situates operations where they make the most logistical sense: near cities, which are full of waste–and customers–thereby cutting transportation costs. * * * He’s also dependent on U.S. companies to keep pumping out products to be boxed, tethering him to American manufacturing."
(i) The first clause ("Unlike his rivals * * * where it's turned into boxes") may be the undoing of this report, which never discusses the effect of China on global cardboard business.  China is the factory floor of the world, not America (much less its cities). China makes goods, ships thin to US in containers (and some cardboard boxes). When ships return to China, they carry cardboard, waste paper (because China has few trees) and scrap metals.  Why does Mr Pratt not buy cardboard from shippers?
(ii) John Stensholt, How Anthony Pratt made his own name in America. BRW, May 28, 2015
www.brw.com.au/p/lists/rich-200/ ... DMNjubc011sB6TbmQKJ
("In recent years, he has made a series of big bets on the comeback of the US manufacturing sector, an industry written off due to the rise of China as an economic powerhouse and source of cheaper factory labour. Those bets have paid off as the US economy bounces back in impressively resilient fashion.  'The rest of the world is just coming around to what we have always thought, that America is the place to be' ")

* The quotation gives short shrift. There is no need to read the rest of (c)(ii).
* BRW (magazine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRW_(magazine)
(1981- ; online only since 2013)