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Graphic Packaging, DHL to invest $274M in Louisiana
May 3, 2017 By Louisiana Economic Development
May 2, 2017 – Graphic Packaging and DHL Supply Chain have announced they will make a combined $274-million capital investment in Northeast Louisiana and develop a 1.27 million-square-foot folding carton plant and logistics centre in Monroe.
In West Monroe, Graphic Packaging will continue to reinvest in its paper manufacturing location, including upgrades to the mill’s paper machines. The company’s West Monroe operations will supply paperboard for the new packaging and logistics centre in Monroe, where DHL will build the 1.27 million-square-foot centre consisting of a 793,000-square-foot distribution facility and a 480,000-square-foot carton converting facility.
The project will create 93 jobs, and Louisiana Economic Development estimates the warehouse operations will result in an additional 74 jobs, for a total of more than 160 new jobs in Northeast Louisiana. Graphic Packaging will continue to employ more than 800 people in its West Monroe mill and in the new combined folding carton plant, where Graphic Packaging will move carton production from the company’s two existing carton sites in West Monroe to the new Monroe site.
In addition to West Monroe mill investments totalling $120 million over the next several years, Graphic Packaging will invest $70 million in new folding carton plant equipment for the converting plant in Monroe. DHL will construct that building and the adjoining distribution centre. The total construction investment for the new Monroe facility will be over $84 million.
DHL says it will complete the new logistics centre by the second half of 2018, with Graphic Packaging consolidating the production of its two West Monroe carton plants into the new combined converting facility in 2019.
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