ACCC tick for Nippon Paper’s re-creation of Amcor paper empire

Then Amcor boss Stan Wallis in 2008.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has anointed the effective re-creation of the empire Stan Wallis built in his days running Amcor.

It has done so by approving Nippon Paper’s $1.7bn acquisition of the paper packaging assets of Orora, which was spun off from Amcor.

Wallis ran Amcor, the old Australian Paper Mills (APM), for 19 years to 1996. In that time he laid the blueprint for the now global packaging giant, which started its life on the banks of the Yarra River at what is now Southbank in 1868.

After Russell Jones fast-forwarded Amcor’s global expansion in the early part of the century, a move later perfected by now BHP chair Ken MacKenzie, its paper assets were spun out.

PaperlinX was first to go in 2007, and with it the state-of-the-art paper mill in Maryvale in Victoria.

PaperlinX wasn’t a star performer and in 2009, Nippon expanded its presence in Australia when it snapped up the mill and others assets for $700 million.

Orora was spun out of Amcor by MacKenzie in 2013, separating its packaging distribution business into a new company.

Now, the ACCC has approved Nippon’s purchase of Orora’s Australasian fibre packaging business, in a $1.7 billion deal sealed last year.

Orora still has some paper packaging in the US but its Australian arm is in glass bottling and aluminium cans for the beverage industry.

Essentially Nippon has re-created what was APM and then Amcor, before Jones and MacKenzie took the company into flexible package and more plastic.

Nippon thinks the future will be brighter for paper and cardboard because of their recycling base and the Orora purchase moves it higher up the value chain in Australia.

The circle has effectively turned, as Amcor powers forward as a primarily global company but the old base is back in business under Nippon’s care.