Abitibi Consolidated Inc. was a Canadian pulp and paper company based in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. Abitibi-Consolidated was formed from the merger of Abitibi-Price Inc. and Stone Consolidated Corp. on May 29, 1997; the Company merged with

Bowater Bowater Inc. was a paper and pulp business headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina. It merged with Abitibi-Consolidated in 2007, and the combined company went on to become Resolute Forest Products. History The North American assets of Bow ...

in 2007 to form

AbitibiBowater Resolute Forest Products (French: ''Produits forestiers Résolu''), formerly known as AbitibiBowater Inc., is a Canada-headquartered pulp and paper company. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Resolute was formed in 2007 by the merger of Bowater ...

Operations

A network of 19 paper mills, 20 sawmills, 4 remanufacturing facilities and 2 engineered wood facilities, located in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, supplied publishers, printers, building products distributors and housing manufacturers in over 70 countries. It had approximately 12,500 employees. A global leader in

newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has an ...

, commercial printing papers and wood products, the Company saw combined revenues of $4.85 billion in 2006. Number one in Canada in terms of total certified woodlands, Abitibi-Consolidated was also one of the largest recyclers of newspapers and magazines, serving 21 metropolitan areas in North America and the United Kingdom. In addition, the Company had significant hydroelectric generating assets in eastern Canada, which provided a cost advantage for the associated production facilities and was an extension into the energy sector.

History

Price Brothers

Price Brothers & Company Limited was a lumber firm from

founded in 1820 as William Price Company by William Price. Following the death of Price Sr sons

William Evan Price William Evan Price (November 17, 1827 – June 12, 1880) was a businessman and political figure in Quebec, Canada. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament representing Chicoutimi-Saguenay from 1872 to 1874. Biography He was born at the W ...

and Evans John Price took over and the firm became Price Brothers and Company Limited. In 1910 the company became Price Brothers Limited as (Sir) William Price III took control of the family firm. After Sir William's death in 1924, his sons John Herbert and Arthur Clifford Price assumed control. In the 1930s the Price family lost control and the firm was sold. Price Brothers and Company was renamed Price Limited in 1966 and was acquired by Abitibi Power and Paper Co. and became

Abitibi-Price Abitibi Consolidated Inc. was a Canadian pulp and paper company based in Montreal, Quebec. Abitibi-Consolidated was formed from the merger of Abitibi-Price Inc. and Stone Consolidated Corp. on May 29, 1997; the Company merged with Bowater in 2 ...

in 1974. When Abitibi-Price became Abitibi-Consolidated in 1997, the Price name finally disappeared.

Abitibi

Abitibi Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd. was founded in 1912 at

Iroquois Falls, Ontario Iroquois Falls is a town in Northern Ontario, Canada, with a population of 4,537 at the 2016 census. The town centre lies 11 km east of Hwy 11 on the banks of the Abitibi River, west of Lake Abitibi. Timmins, one of the largest cities in ...

on the

Abitibi River The Abitibi River is a river in northeastern Ontario, Canada, which flows northwest from Lake Abitibi to join the Moose River which empties into James Bay. This river is long, and descends . It is the fifth longest river entirely in Ontario A ...

Frank Harris Anson Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Cur ...

. The following February, the company name was changed to Abitibi Power and Paper Co. Ltd. to reflect the power generation business it created through the need to build a dam to generate electricity for its mill. The company expanded to other locations in Ontario where it also built dams and operated hydro electric power stations. Wherever the company built a mill, a new town sprang up around it and it even built radio stations such as CFCH in Iroquois Falls to serve these remote new communities. The company acquired other small lumber operations and grew to become a major force in the North American newsprint business but the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection on September 10, 1932. A Royal commission was held to enquire into the company's affairs, with its report issued in March 1941. It remained under the control of the Court-appointed Receiver until 1946, the longest such receivership in Canadian history. Emerging from bankruptcy, the company prospered in the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

industrial boom and in 1965 changed its name to the Abitibi Paper Company Ltd. In 1974, Abitibi purchased a controlling interest in the

Price Brothers & Company Limited A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...

which had extensive operations in the

Province of Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen p ...

and whose vast forestry business dated back to the William Price Company established in Quebec City in 1820. The merger of Abitibi and the Price Brothers made it the world's biggest newsprint producer. In 1979, the corporate name was changed to Abitibi-Price Inc. and in 1981 it was taken over by Olympia and York Developments Ltd. In 1982, Abitibi-Price bought out the

Hilroy ACCO Brands Corporation is an American multinational company and is one of the world's largest designers, manufacturers, and marketers of premium business, technology, academic, and consumer products. It was created by the merger of ACCO World ...

companies, whose founder, Roy Hill, had been a member of the Abitibi board of directors and had died in 1978.hilroy.ca: "About Hilroy"
/ref> With the purchase of Hilroy, Abitibi-Price became the premiere vertically-integrated supplier of office stationery in the Canadian market. The collapse of Olympia and York in 1992 resulted in the consortium of banks being forced to take control of Abitibi-Price Inc. for a short time until they sold it through a public share issue in 1994. The share issue also entailed the divestment and sale of Hilroy to the

Mead Corporation Mead () is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits, spices, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5% ABV to more than 20%. The defining charact ...

Consolidated

The Bathurst Power and Paper Company Ltd. built a mill in

Bathurst, New Brunswick Bathurst ( 2021 population; UA 12,157 ) is the largest City in Northern New Brunswick, it overlooks the Nepisiguit Bay, part of Chaleur Bay and is at the estuary of the Nepisiguit River. As part of the New Brunswick local governance reform , e ...

in 1914. Majority control of the company was obtained in the late 1930s by Arthur J. Nesbitt and his partner Peter A. T. Thomson through their

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

Power Corporation of Canada Power Corporation of Canada () is a management and holding company that focuses on financial services in North America, Europe and Asia. Its core holdings are insurance, retirement, wealth management and investment management, including a portfol ...

. In the early 1960s, Power Corporation bought the Consolidated Paper Company. When

Paul Desmarais Paul Desmarais Sr. (January 4, 1927 – October 8, 2013) was a Canadian financier and philanthropist, based in Montreal. With an estimated family net worth of US$4.5 billion (as of March 2012), Desmarais was ranked by ''Forbes'' as the fou ...

acquired control of Power Corporation in 1968, the two companies were merged to become Consolidated-Bathurst Inc., which, in 1989, was sold to

Stone Container Corporation Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation was a global paperboard and paper-based packaging company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, with approximately 21,000 employees. In 2007, Smurfit-Stone was ranked 13 in PricewaterhouseC ...

of Chicago, Illinois who renamed it Stone Consolidated Inc.

Acquisitions

In 2000, Abitibi-Consolidated acquired a majority shareholding in Canadian integrated forest products company

Donohue Inc. Donohue Inc. was a Canadian company founded in 1920 as Murray River Power and Pulp Co. Limited and incorporated in Quebec. The company changed its name to Donohue Brothers Limited, in 1921, then to Donohue Company Limited, in 1970, and to Donohue I ...

Merger with Bowater

On January 29, 2007,

and Abitibi-Consolidated announced they would be merging to create

. The merger created the third largest pulp and paper company in North America, and the eighth largest in the world. Following the merger, Abitibi-Consolidated was rated B1, B+ and B+ by

Moody's Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides international ...

Standard & Poor's S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...

and

Fitch Ratings Fitch Ratings Inc. is an American credit rating agency and is one of the " Big Three credit rating agencies", the other two being Moody's and Standard & Poor's. It is one of the three nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSRO) ...

respectively.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Company web site
Pulp and paper companies of Canada Defunct pulp and paper companies Companies based in Montreal Multinational companies