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    MeadWestvaco

    MeadWestvaco Corp. history, profile and corporate video

     MeadWestvaco Corp. is a global packaging company that provides packaging solutions to healthcare, beauty and personal care, food, beverage, tobacco and home and garden industries. It also produces specialty chemicals for the automotive, energy and infrastructure industries. The company operates through five business segments: Food & Beverage, Home, Health & Beauty, Industrial, Specialty Chemicals, and Community Development and Land Management. The Food & Beverage segment produces packaging materials, and designs and produces packaging solutions primarily for the global food, food service, beverage, dairy and tobacco end markets, as well as paperboard for commercial printing. The Home, Health & Beauty segment designs and produces packaging solutions for the global personal care, fragrance, home care, lawn and garden, prescription drug and healthcare end markets. The Industrial segment designs and produces corrugated packaging solutions, primarily for produce, meat, consumer products and bulk goods primarily in Brazil. This segment also includes operations in India, which develop corrugated packaging materials as well as corrugated packaging solutions for the domestic fresh produce growers. The Specialty Chemicals segment manufactures, markets and distributes specialty chemicals derived from sawdust and other byproducts of the papermaking process in North America, Europe, South America and Asia. Its products include performance chemicals derived from pine chemicals used in printing inks, asphalt paving and adhesives as well as the agricultural, paper and petroleum industries. This segment also includes products based on activated carbon used in gas vapor emission control systems for automobiles and trucks and applications for air, water and food purification. The Community Development and Land Management segment include the operations of Real Estate Development, Forestry and Leasing Activities. The Real Estate Development operations includes selling non-core forestlands primarily for recreational and residential uses; entitling and improving high-value tracts; and master planning select landholdings. The Forestry operations include growing and harvesting softwood and hardwood on the company’s forestlands for external consumption and for use by the company’s mill-based business. The Leasing Activities operations include fees from third parties undertaking mineral extraction operations, as well as fees from recreational leases on the company’s forestlands. MeadWestvaco was founded on January 29, 2002 and is headquartered in Richmond, VA.

    “MeadWestvaco History

    MeadWestvaco was formed in January 2002 as the result of a merger between The Mead Corporation of Dayton, Ohio, and Westvaco (originally the Piedmont Pulp and Paper Company and then The West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company).

    The ancestor of the Mead Paper Company started out in the paper business in 1846 but did not adopt the name Mead until 1882. Over the decades, Mead diversified into many different businesses and economic sectors, through purchases, mergers and joint ventures. It was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1935. In 1966, Mead acquired Westab, which had already merged with the 1960 union of Montag Brothers Paper Company and Champion Paper. Westab’s product line included the Big Chief tablet, Spiral Notebook brand and Hytone Notebooks.

    In 1968, Mead entered the information technology sector by acquiring a small company called Data Corporation for $6 million, and renamed it Mead Data Central. Mead was originally interested in an inkjet printing system developed by Data. However, Data had also been working on a full-text information retrieval system for the U.S. Air Force, and by 1967 had adapted this product to the task of indexing and searching legal precedent as part of an experiment with the Ohio State Bar. After an Arthur D. Little study indicated that the information retrieval product had a promising future, Mead Data Central launched it as the LEXIS legal research system in 1973. In December 1994, Mead sold the LexisNexissystem to Reed Elsevier for $1.5 billion.

    The U.S. state of Illinois subsequently audited Mead’s income tax returns and charged Mead an additional $4 million in income tax and penalties for the sale of LexisNexis; Mead paid the tax under protest, then sued for a refund in an Illinois state court. On April 15, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Mead that the Illinois courts had incorrectly applied the Court’s precedents on whether Illinois could constitutionally apply its income tax to Mead, an out-of-state, Ohio-based corporation. The Court reversed and remanded so that the lower courts could apply the correct test and determine whether Mead and Lexis were a “unitary” business.

    In 1986 Mead acquired Ampad makers of legal pads which it sold in 1992 to Bain Capital.

    In 2005, the Papers business unit—including both Mead and Westvaco paper mills—was sold to the investment firm Cerberus Capital Management for about $2.3 billion. The new company is called NewPage Corporation,which operated from Dayton, Ohio for a time until it outgrew its facilities. NewPage is currently headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio.

    In 2008, MeadWestvaco sold its Charleston, SC kraft paper mill to Kapstone Paper and Packaging.

    The company owns large tracts of original Westvaco land in northern Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The company is relatively lenient regarding safe and non-destructive recreational use of its land by private citizens, including uses for hunting, fishing, and the digging of ramps (wild leeks). Unpaved roads provide access the area from Anjean andRichwood. MeadWestvaco, however, does not permit ATV or other recreational offroad vehicle use on its lands.

    MeadWestvaco began using the “MWV” brand in 2008.

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    In February 2011, MeadWestvaco sold its Envelope Products Business including the Columbian Brand Envelope to Cenveo Corporation’s Quality Park Envelope Products Group.

    In 2012, ACCO Brands acquired the consumer and office products businesses, including Mead, Five Star, AT-A-GLANCE, Cambridge, Day Runner, Hilroy, Tilibra, and Grafons.”

    *Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org

    **Video published on YouTube by “YourBow Adops

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