Utah board mill gains an investor

A subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based Peterson Partners Inc. says it has made an equity investment in Crossroads Paper, a 100-percent-recycled-content packaging board mill planned for construction in Utah “to serve the growing demand for e-commerce, agricultural and industrial packaging in the Western United States.”

The Peterson Real Assets subsidiary involved says it “invests with a long-term view” and “looks for opportunities in the resources and real assets sectors to make both pre-development and commercialization stage investments into projects that can have a long-term positive impact on the industries and communities in which they operate.”

Matthew Day, partner with Peterson Partners, says, “Crossroads Paper is a true environmentally sustainable real assets project that we believe will become a critical piece of the recycling, packaging and e-commerce infrastructure of the West. We are passionate about helping great people build great businesses. John Sasine and Ron Sasine are not only outstanding entrepreneurs, but they are veterans of the industry. We are thrilled to be backing such an outstanding team.”

Crossroads Paper CEO John Sasine comments, “Finding partners who not only have an appetite for large-scale real assets projects but also believe in our mission of sustainability was critical. Peterson Partners is the ideal partner for our company’s next phase.”

The Crossroads Paper venture was announced in 2019. At that time, the company’s founders said it expected the mill to have one papermaking machine with the capacity to produce 350,000 to 375,000 tons per year. The Sasines said they anticipated the mill would consume 385,000 tons of recovered fiber annually, both in the form of old corrugated containers (OCC) and mixed paper, with OCC accounting for an expected 70 percent of the mill’s furnish.

Peterson Partners indicates a site selection process is still underway as of late June, “with a final determination expected by year-end.”

Peterson Partners describes itself as an independent investment management firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management. Since first raising outside capital nearly 20 years ago, Peterson has invested in more than 200 companies, says the firm.