Green Bay Packaging cuts ribbon on Wisconsin’s first new paper mill in 30 years
June 23, 2021Green Bay Packaging ceremonially cut the ribbon on its new $500 million mill Thursday.
The mill located at 1601 North Quincy Street is the first new paper mill to be built in the state of Wisconsin in more than 35 years.
The new mill replaces the original mill built in 1947.
Still a family-owned business, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Will Kress touted the new mill’s improvements when it comes to the environment.
“To say it’s just a paper machine is an oversimplification of what’s been built here. We basically built a brand new paper mill from the ground up. So we have a new office. We have new boilers, two new boilers, we switched from coal to natural gas, which is a big environmental improvement,” says Kress. “We have a new water effluent treatment plant which allows us not to discharge any water into the Fox River. We clean it here, we send it to NEW Water just down the river, they clean it some more, they send it back, we clean it some more and then we reuse that water along with some other industrial users’ water, so we are conserving water, number one, and also zero discharge into the Fox River.”
The predicts a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of paper produced.
