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Paper company blazes an environmental trail

NewPage, which can trace its roots to Mead, focuses on environmental issues.

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer Updated 10:53 PM Saturday, October 31, 2009

MIAMI TWP., Montgomery County — In many ways, NewPage is not your parents’ paper company.

It’s smaller locally than Mead was at its height. It doesn’t have a familiar downtown tower. It communicates a message of sustainability via a distinctly paperless method.

Still, with 380 local employees, NewPage is connected, in its way, to Mead, having been created from MeadWestvaco Corp. The paper producer has been much in the news lately, with national attention given to the company’s environmental podcasts and NewPage’s appeal to the federal government for duties against certain Chinese and Indonesian imports.

In 2005, Cerberus Capital Partners bought NewPage for $2.3 billion from MeadWestvaco. Two years later, the company raised a new headquarters on Gander Creek Drive and doubled its size through the purchase of Stora Enso Oyj’s North American assets.

Rick Willett Jr. succeeded Mark Suwyn as NewPage’s chief executive in March 2009. Suwyn remains executive chairman and Willett also is president.

Willett sat down recently at his company’s local headquarters to speak with the Dayton Daily News. The conversation has been edited for space.

Question: A big part of your culture — and you can see it in the building we’re in now — is your focus on environmental issues. Why that focus?

Willett: We believe we are one of the greenest companies around. Over 50 percent of our energy comes from renewable resources, where the United States is still struggling to be 6 or 7 percent (achieved from) renewable energy. Over 70 percent of our products are from renewable resources .... We depend on natural resources. We need thriving, vibrant forests for us to be successful.

Q: At least initially, isn’t that more expensive?

W: All of our improvements in renewable energy have been profitable. We’ve reduced our greenhouse gases by 17 percent since 1990 — which is two-and-a-half times better than the Kyoto Accord (an international pact on combating climate change), which the U.S. government never signed. But all of that was also profitable. So we believe we can be a green company and have it be profitable.

Q: What is it about the Dayton area that works for your headquarters?

W: I think it’s Midwestern values and ethics. We have ethical, very socially responsible employees. We have very hard-working employees. But also, by moving to (Miami Twp.), we get the benefit of being able to source talent from both Dayton and Cincinnati.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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