Georgia-Pacific

Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, toilet and paper towel dispensers, packaging, building products and related chemicals, and other forest products—largely made from its own timber. Since 2005, it has been an independently operated and managed subsidiary of Koch Industries. As of fall 2019, the company employed more than 35,000 people at more than 180 locations in North America, South America and Europe.

Georgia-Pacific was founded by Owen Robertson Cheatham on September 22, 1927 in Augusta, Georgia, as the Georgia Hardwood Lumber Co. He started the company through the acquisition of a wholesale hardwood lumber yard. The nascent company encountered difficulties two years after its incorporation as the United States fell into the Great Depression. Due to slow demand, the company had only five employees in 1934. Over the years it expanded, adding sawmills and plywood plants. The company acquired its first West Coast facility in 1947 and changed its name to Georgia-Pacific Plywood & Lumber Company in 1948.

In 1956, the company changed its name to Georgia-Pacific Corporation. In 1957—led by new president Robert B. Pamplin (who would lead for two decades)—the company entered the pulp and paper business by building a kraft pulp and linerboard mill at Toledo, Oregon. This was the only pulp and paper mill that the company ever built. The company continued to make a series of acquisitions, including Union Lumber (owned by Boise Cascade) in 1973, US Plywood in 1987, American Forest Products Corporation in 1988, Great Northern Nekoosa in 1990, and the Fort James Corporation in 2000. The Fort James Corporation was the result of a series of mergers of enterprises that included the Fort Howard Corporation, the James River Corporation and Crown-Zellerbach.

In 1996, Georgia-Pacific sold its operations in Martell, California and its surrounding timberlands to Sierra Pacific Industries. In 1999, Georgia-Pacific sold its California timber lands to Hawthorne Timber. In 2000, Georgia-Pacific sold its remaining timber lands to Plum Creek Timber. In August 2001, Georgia-Pacific completed the sale of four un-coated paper mills and their associated businesses and assets to Canadian papermaker Domtar for US$1.65 billion.

It was announced on November 13, 2005 that Georgia-Pacific would be acquired by Koch Industries. On December 23, 2005, Koch Industries finalized the $21 billion acquisition of Georgia-Pacific. Georgia-Pacific was removed from the NYSE (it had traded under the symbol GP) and shareholders surrendered their shares for about $48 per share.

The Georgia-Pacific Tower in Atlanta continues to house the company's headquarters. The Crown Zellerbach Building was built as the headquarters of Crown Zellerbach in San Francisco in 1959.

On January 11, 2010, Georgia-Pacific signed an agreement to acquire Grant Forest Products' oriented strand board ("OSB") facility at Englehart, Ontario and the associated facility at Earlton, Ontario, as well as its OSB facilities at Clarendon and Allendale, South Carolina, for approximately $400 million. The transaction closed in July 2013, following Canadian regulatory review and US court approval under the Hart–Scott–Rodino merger review process.

On June 19, 2014, Georgia-Pacific announced it would acquire SPG Holdings.