Smurfit-Stone opens New Lenox plant in Chicagoland

Oct 29, 2008. /Lesprom.com/. Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation celebrated the opening of its new Chicago-area container plant located in New Lenox, Illinois, the company said. The New Lenox plant is one of the most modern corrugated container manufacturing facilities in the industry. The plant will employ approximately 145 people and serve companies in the pizza, oil and lubricants, laundry detergent and household goods, food products, cooking oils and health care products industries. Smurfit-Stone Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Moore said, "Our investment in New Lenox represents Smurfit-Stone's long-standing commitment to the Chicagoland market area. Smurfit-Stone has had strong ties to Chicago for many years and our new world-class facility here helps to further position us as a leading integrated packaging company. Our operations span major packaging markets in North America and Asia, and provide our customers with quality, innovative and value-added products and services wherever and whenever they need them." The New Lenox facility is a high-volume and high-efficiency operation that can produce as much as 2.4 billion square feet of corrugated board annually. The design, development and manufacture of the products made in New Lenox are supported by Smurfit-Stone Image Pac, the company's display and graphics business unit. Smurfit-Stone President and COO Steve Klinger said, "By combining our design expertise with our manufacturing network, Smurfit-Stone Image Pac creates one of the industry's largest display and graphics manufacturing and distribution systems. New Lenox and Smurfit-Stone Image Pac are teaming up on a number of products and services for our customers, including our pizza program." The New Lenox plant was designed to be a flexible and efficient facility. The plant is equipped with a 110-inch BHS corrugator, a Mitsubishi Evol flexo folder gluer, two Martin flexo folder gluers, three Martin rotary die cutters and is a 100 percent conveyored operation. Smurfit-Stone serves as a single point of contact to provide its customers with containerboard, corrugated containers, display and graphics, automated packaging systems, recycling services and global packaging solutions.