Smurfit-Stone Announces Plan to Acquire St. Laurent Paperboard

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. and St. Laurent Paperboard, Inc. jointly announced today that Smurfit-Stone has agreed to acquire St. Laurent for about $1.4 billion, consisting of approximately $625 million $913 million in cash, Smurfit-Stone common stock, and the assumption of St. Laurent's debt.

Ray Curran, president and chief executive officer of Smurfit-Stone, said, "This transaction has multiple benefits for investors. It will expand our capabilities to serve the fast-growing market for high-impact graphics packaging, and it presents an excellent business and geographic fit. It is also expected to be accretive to our earnings."

The transaction will significantly expand Smurfit-Stone's capabilities to produce specialty grades of containerboard, such as white top linerboard, coated and bleached linerboard and lightweight medium used in point-of-purchase promotional packaging. St. Laurent's corrugated packaging plants will expand Smurfit-Stone's capabilities to provide microflute and other high impact graphics packaging to customers throughout North America. St. Laurent's paperboard operations include four containerboard mills with 1.5 million tons of capacity and 16 packaging plants.

"The combination of these packaging businesses into one North American unit will generate approximately $50 million annually in cost savings," Curran said. "In addition, by joining Smurfit-Stone's containerboard system with St. Laurent capabilities we will create significant new opportunities to optimize our containerboard manufacturing costs.

"Finally, St. Laurent has superior capabilities in specialty containerboard such as white top linerboard and lightweight medium. By adding these operations, Smurfit-Stone develops an unmatched ability to serve customers for microflute and value graphics packaging and point-of-purchase displays. Finally, St. Laurent management has done an excellent job in the past twelve months of reducing costs and increasing production at its white top mills. We expect to continue with this progress."

Jay J. Guarandiano, president and chief executive officer of St. Laurent Paperboard, added, "This transaction enhances our shareholder value. Shareholders will be able to participate in the many benefits accruing from the combination of St. Laurent's niche in higher value white top linerboard and microfluting grades and Smurfit-Stone's preeminent position as the largest container and containerboard producer in North America."

Smurfit-Stone operates about 300 facilities worldwide. The company has a production capacity of six million tons of containerboard and one million tons of other packaging grades.

St. Laurent Paperboard owns four mills and 16 packaging plants, as well as 920,000 acres of forest land in Quebec and solid wood products operations.