One of Fort Mill’s biggest companies will be sold for $3 billion to Canadian company
Domtar will be bought by a Canadian company, in a move announced Tuesday.
According to a joint company release, Paper Excellence will acquire Domtar for $55 per share, in cash. It’s a roughly $3 billion sale.
Plans are for Domtar to continue as a stand-alone business led by its management team. Paper Excellence will keep its corporate and production sites.
“We are excited to add Domtar and its employees to the Paper Excellence global family,” Paper Excellence global CFO Joe Ragan said in the release. “This marks a major step in our global strategy of identifying well-positioned assets and positioning them for growth.”
The move is a step into the American market for Paper Excellence, based in British Columbia. Domtar is a long-time Fort Mill company in the Kingsley area. Domtar produces fiber-based products for communication, packaging, pulp and other materials. Domtar has 6,400 employees in more than 50 countries worldwide. It’s annual sales are about $3.7 billion.
As of mid-2020, the Fort Mill office employed about 550 people.
“This agreement enables our shareholders to realize certain and immediate cash value at a significant premium for their shares,” Domtar president and CEO John D. Williams said in the release. “This transaction validates our long-term strategic plan for our leading paper and pulp businesses, and for our continued expansion into packaging.”
The transaction should be complete in the second half of 2021.
Earlier this year Domtar announced it would sell the personal care side of its business for almost $1 billion. There have been layoffs and plant changes at Domtar sites in other parts of the country the past couple of years.
This story was originally published May 11, 2021 at 10:48 AM with the headline "One of Fort Mill’s biggest companies will be sold for $3 billion to Canadian company."
