PCA Chairman/CEO Mark Kowlzan

At the University Of Maine's 66th annual Paper Days event, the first major speaker walked onstage...barefoot. Doug Hall, UM Chemical Engineering graduate, is the founder and CEO of Eureka! Ranch in Newtown, Ohio. He described times he's fallen off stages, explaining his practical ("I'm from Maine; we're practical people.") decision to go barefoot so he can feel the edge of the stage and avoid literal pitfalls.

Together, the Eureka! Ranch and the University of Maine created the Innovation Engineering program, a collaboration of industry and academics, offered as both an undergraduate minor and graduate certificate.

The Paper Days event in April, with 340 attendees from 23 states and Canadian provinces, embraced the challenge of a new global environment. While recognizing and respecting the history of the industry in Maine, the primary focus and excitement was about the future: innovation, new graduates and the generosity of industry leaders toward the vision of repackaging Maine.

Maine and Finland share some important charactetistics, as Chemical Engineering Professor Dr. Adriaan van Heiningen demonstrated.

• Percentage of forested land (Finland: 74%; Maine:76%)

• Finland is the most heavily-forested country in the EU; Maine is the most heavily-forested state in the U.S.

Dr. van Heiningen discussed the worldwide decline in demand for printing/process papers (40%) and the increased demand for tissue (30%), fiberboard (10%), and specialty products (20%).

Clay Enos, Senior Consultant for Fisher International, and a 2000 graduate of UM's Chemical Engineering program, has a long history as an engineer in the state's mills: Verso in Bucksport, MeadWestvaco in Rumford, and Eastern Fine Paper in Lincoln.
"Maine production capacity is more than 65% based in declining grades, the highest in the nation; European average is closer to 30%," Enos pointed out. Worldwide, 300 sites that were making P & W and newsprint have closed in the past ten years.

The Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) is one of the few packaging companies that didn't shut down when the going got tough, but kept acquiring low-cost mills, according to Chairman/CEO Mark Kowlzan. He attributes PCA's success and longevity to its strong customer base (19,000 customers nationwide) and to the conversion in production from newsprint to containerboard. In fact, corrugated containers account for 85% of PCA's EBITDA.

Kowlzan cited PCA as the "best performing company over an extended period of time, with the best volume growth, margins and ROIC in the industry." A graph comparing corrugated products growth (cumulative % change in shipments/workday) between 1997-2015 showed a 65% increase for PCA and a 5% decrease for the industry.

On the second day of the conference, a panel of students discussed their trip to industry locations in Germany and Austria. A Tappi Research Expedition Europe (TREE) is an opportunity for a dozen students studying engineering with a passion for the pulp and paper industry to travel overseas and experience the industry in another part of the world.

"It's been a great career...you can work in a paper mill, you can work in innovation, you can work on capital projects or you can work in procurement...You heard the folks from PCA, you can lead a company with your Engineering degree...You only have open doors in front of you." So began Dan McNally, Senior Procurement Officer of WestRock, addressing the student attendees. He went on to introduce WestRock as the second-largest global paper company. WestRock's business mix is almost equally-balanced between corrugated and consumer packaging.