Abitibi-Consolidated
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. | |
 |
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| Type | Public, TSX : A, NYSE : ABY |
|---|---|
| Founded | Canada (1997) |
| Headquarters |  Montreal, Quebec |
| Key people | John W. Weaver, CEO Jacques Bougie, Chairman Pierre Rougeau, CFO |
| Industry | Pulp and Paper |
| Products | Newsprint, Uncoated Groundwood, Wood Products, Recycling Services |
| Revenue |  $5.342 billion CAD (2005) |
| Operating income |  $276.00 million CAD (2005) |
| Net income | $350.00 million CAD (2005) |
| Employees | 17,000 (2006) |
| Website | http://www.abitibiconsolidated.com |
Abitibi-Consolidated NYSE: ABY TSX: A is a Canadian pulp and paper company based in Montreal, Quebec. The company has interests in 27 paper mills and in 22 sawmills. It has approximately 17,000 employees.
It is a global leader in newsprint and uncoated groundwood (value-added groundwood) papers as well as a major producer of wood products, generating sales of $5.4 billion in 2003. With over 15,000 employees, excluding PanAsia, the Company does business in approximately 70 countries. The Company is also the world's largest recycler of newspapers and magazines, serving 16 metropolitan areas with more than 12,300 Paper Retriever® collection points and 14 recycling centres in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Abitibi-Consolidated owns or is a partner in 27 paper mills, 22 sawmills, 4 remanufacturing facilities and 1 engineered wood facility in Canada, the U.S., the UK, South Korea, China and Thailand.
[edit] Merger with Bowater
On January 29th, 2007, Bowater and Abitibi-Consolidated announced they would be merging to create AbitibiBowater Inc. [1]The merger would created the third largest pulp and paper company in North America, and the eighth largest in the world. Following the merger, Abitibi-Consolidated is rated B1, B+ and B+ by Moodys, Standard and Poors and Fitch Ratings respectively.
[edit] Forerunner companies:
Abitibi:
Abitibi Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd. : founded in 1912 at Iroquois Falls, Ontario on the Abitibi River by Frank Harris Anson. The following February, the company name was changed to Abitibi Power and Paper Co. Ltd. to reflect the power generation business it created through the need to build a dam to generate electricity for its mill. The company expanded to other locations in Ontario where it also built dams [2] and operated hydro electric power stations. Wherever the company built a mill, a new town sprang up around it and it even built radio stations such as CFCH in Iroquois Falls to serve these remote new communities. The company acquired other small lumber operations and grew to become a major force in the North American newsprint business but the Great Depression forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection on September 10, 1932. It remained under the control of the Court-appointed Receiver until 1946, the longest such receivership in Canadian history. Emerging from bankruptcy, the company prospered in the post-World War II industrial boom and in 1965 changed its name to the Abitibi Paper Company Ltd. In 1974, Abitibi purchased a controlling interest in the Price Brothers & Company Limited which had extensive operations in the Province of Quebec and whose vast forestry business dated back to the William Price Company established in Montreal in 1820. The merger of Abitibi and the Price Brothers made it the world's biggest newsprint producer. In 1979, the corporate name was changed to Abitibi-Price Inc. and in 1981 it was taken over by Olympia and York Developments Ltd. The collapse of Olympia and York in 1992 resulted in the consortium of banks being forced to take control of Abitibi-Price Inc. for a short time until they sold it through a public share issue in 1994.
Consolidated:
The Bathurst Power and Paper Company Ltd. built a mill in Bathurst, New Brunswick in 1914. Majority control of the company was obtained in the late 1930s by Arthur J. Nesbitt and his partner Peter A. T. Thomson through their holding company, Power Corporation of Canada. In the early 1960s, Power Corporation bought the Consolidated Paper Company. When Paul Desmarais acquired control of Power Corporation in 1968, the two companies were merged to become Consolidated-Bathurst Inc. In 1989, the company was sold to Stone Container Corporation of Chicago, Illinois who renamed it Stone Consolidated Inc.
Abitibi-Consolidated was formed from the merger between Abitibi-Price Inc. and Stone-Consolidated on May 29th, 1997. In 2000, Abitibi-Consolidated acquired a majority shareholding in Canadian integrated forest products company Donohue Inc.
