OX Industries announces the acquisition of Armorboard Packaging located in York, Pennsylvania.  Armorboard is a full-service converter of protective packaging offering superior service and quality.  Armorboard produces U channel and edge protection for the steel, glass, wood, and snack food industry as well many others.   

"We are excited to add the Armorboard team to our group as we expand our product offering that vertically integrates with our business model nationally," said CEO, Kevin Hayward.

Ecolab Inc., the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services has signed an agreement to acquire the paper chemicals business from Georgia-Pacific. This business supplies differentiated products and applications that provide strength, softness and durability to paper. These products and applications will enhance Ecolab's position in the growing Tissue and Towel, as well as the Packaging and Board segments of the paper industry. The business had 2016 revenues of approximately $43 million. The transaction is expected to be completed before the end of the year subject to customary closing conditions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition will expand the paper industry offerings of Ecolab's Paper business, which provides innovative chemistries and solutions, to help producers improve their efficiency, water and energy savings, product quality, and profitability.

"This acquisition will enable us to provide additional value to our customers who strive to produce higher-quality paper more efficiently while preserving natural resources," said Christophe Beck, executive vice president and president, Nalco Water, Ecolab's water management business. "The chemistries gained through this transaction will complement our existing solutions and provide greater opportunity to customize end-to-end programs that meet the needs of our customers."

"We believe this sale to a global industry leader like Ecolab's Nalco Water will be in the best interest of our customers and stakeholders," said Rick Urschel, president, Georgia-Pacific Chemicals.

On the second day of Pack Expo, the drones stole the show. Specifically, Workhorse Group Inc. was showing off their electric vehicle and drone delivery technology. While operating indoors the company was not able to demonstrate the autonomous guidance system due to a lack of a GPS signal, the company has already had very successful field trials with UPS. Unlike the highly hyped solution by Amazon, Workhorse's solution is currently meant only to get the boxes from a truck to the house and assist in speeding up deliveries in rural and suburban environments. As discussed later, if this technology takes hold, and we believe it will, it could mean drastic changes are afoot in the packaging industry.

GPK Talks Market Bifurcation - Though still looking to the future, Graphic Packaging's concerns are much more in the present. Speaking with the company's lead designer, Graphic sees a major bifurcation forming in the market, especially in the packaged food space. On one side, high-end packaged food producers continue to move further and further up the value chain, desperate to get out of the center of the store and towards the edge and are doing so by continuing to innovate their packaging and trying to grab the attention of high-end customers. On the other end, packaged food manufacturers focus on reducing costs as lower income consumers struggle to make ends meet. Going forward, we expect this market bifurcation to get even bigger, leaving any producer in the middle with fewer and fewer customers.

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A ban on recovered paper that China's government wants to impose at year end is already occurring in large part, US players said this week. Three major exporters told of selling to China 40% less than their usual volume for this month.

This occurred because the government in China has not released import licenses since late May. Some mills exhausted their allotment so their demand for imports shriveled up, contacts said.

This shifted US bulk grades, led by old corrugated containers (OCC), away from ports and toward domestic mills. Suppliers scanned the country for new homes for OCC and mixed paper. Contacts claimed that mixed paper was being landfilled. Another told of "calling in favors" on OCC offshore to much smaller markets than China. Additional business was in Mexico, India, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, which together last year purchased only 20% of the US' total 10.8 million tons of OCC. China purchased 7.76 million tons and 71.5% of the US OCC in 2016.

"There's a weird oddity here with export," explained a large US mill system official, noting that US containerboard mills continued running at high operating rates of 96-97%.

September was the second full month since China in July notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it would ban "unsorted" recyclables or mixed paper by Dec. 31. The US Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries, National Waste and Recycling Assn., Solid Waste Assn of North America, and Waste Management, the largest US generator of recovered paper, challenged China about its ban. Waste Management and at least one trade group asked for a five-year "phase-out" period before the ban became final.

"If China ends access to this market, there are insufficient end users in other countries to serve as alternate destinations. It will take several years to design, permit, finance, and construct alternative capacity sufficient to manage these materials now imported by China's mills," Waste Management Sr Public Policy Dir Susan Robinson told the WTO and China in a six-page letter. "In the meantime, recycling programs will falter and much of the recovered material currently recycled will instead be disposed in landfills or burned."

While unclear if the topic will be raised, the WTO has scheduled an "informal" Technical Barriers to Trade committee meeting on Nov. 7, following by a "formal" committee meeting on Nov. 8-9, according to the WTO website.

Some US players also hoped import licenses might be freed up from anticipated bureaucratic changes following the 19 thChinese Communist Party Congress meeting on Oct. 18. - via RISI