Longview mill implosion comes amid turnaround effort by foreign owners

In September 2016, officials with Tokyo-based Nippon Paper Industries gathered in Longview to christen a decades-old pulp and paper mill they’d recently purchased from Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser.

Before a crowd of mill employees and politicians, Nippon executives planted a flowering cherry tree and introduced the renamed venture, Nippon Dynawave Packaging, with a new identity and a renewed commitment to safely and responsibly providing world-class products,” according to a 2016 account in The (Longview) Daily News.

A decade later, that commitment is in question, following Tuesday’s catastrophic implosion and chemical spill at Nippon Dynawave Packaging.

Investigators are still determining what caused the rupture of a 900,000-gallon-capacity tank of “white liquor,” a highly caustic compound used in papermaking.

Nippon Paper has confirmed basic details of the spill and expressed its “deepest condolences and offer our heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved families,” according to a statement.

Less clear, however, is what the disaster means for future operations at Nippon’s “liquid packaging” plant, which made paper cups, cartons and other paperboard products, and employed around 450 people. Around 550 people work in the company’s pulp and paper operations.

“The impact of this accident on our financial performance, the environment, production, and shipments is currently being assessed, Nippon said in the same statement.

Nippon Paper purchased the plant as part of a broader effort to cope with falling global demand for traditional paper products. More recently, it dealt with supply chain disruptions and spiking energy costs and, in 2023, posted a large financial loss, according to company filings.

However, the company, which employs around 15,000 people globally, had returned to profitability and appeared to be recovering when tragedy struck the Longview facility.

Nippon Paper traces its origins to the late 19th century, when Japanese industrialists established large-scale paper manufacturing using imported technology.

By the 1930s, Japanese papermaking was largely dominated by a single firm, Oji Paper Company. But in 1949, as part of a postwar reform, Oji was broken into three firms, including Jujo Paper, which became Nippon Paper.

Through the early 2000s, a series of mergers and acquisitions made Nippon Paper one of the world’s largest papermakers. By around 2015, however, declining demand for newsprint and other products forced Nippon Paper to diversify into new products and markets.

In June 2016, Nippon Paper paid Weyerhaeuser $285 million for the Longview pulp and paper plant, which Weyerhaeuser had opened in 1953 to make milk cartons and other food containers, according to The Seattle Times and Fox News.

The sale reflected the two companies’ diverging strategies.

Weyerhaeuser, a timber giant, had been a major player in the pulp and paper business since opening a mill in Longview in 1931, near the current Nippon site, and had eventually run dozens of mills.

By the 2000s, however, heavy pressure from investors led Weyerhaeuser to start spinning off its paper operations and other ancillary businesses to focus on its more profitable timber and real estate operations.

Nippon Paper, by contrast, was looking to broaden its business operations in part by acquiring pulp mills in the United States.

The two companies had previously operated a joint venture, known as NORPAC, or North Pacific Paper Company, which launched in 1976 to run a printing and newsprint mill in Longview.

“It is my strong belief that we owe our new start today as Nippon Dynawave Packaging to having developed a deep relationship of trust and mutual respect through our history of collaboration with Weyerhaeuser,” Shuhei Marukawa, executive vice president of Nippon Paper Industries, said at the 2016 ceremony, according to the Daily News account.

Gov. Bob Ferguson has called the incident at Nippon Dynawave the “deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington history.” At least 11 people are confirmed dead.

The spill has also contaminated the Columbia River, city officials said there is no threat to water in the area and that crews successfully diverted the contaminated water away from the wellhead protection area.