WestRock Company’s new, $140 million corrugated box plant in Pleasant Prairie will employ between 190 and 200 employees, according to site and operational plans submitted to the village. Those employees will work at the facility over three different shifts.
Atlanta-based WestRock plans to occupy a 593,564-square-foot building at 9423 Koessl Court, which has yet to be constructed. The land where the building will be built is located within Pleasant Prairie’s
LogistiCenter, the former site of a We Energies power plant.
The facility will have the capacity to produce up to 2.6 billion square feet of corrugated board a year, according to a village staff report. WestRock estimates it will use 9 million gallons of water a year to manufacture its corrugated boxes.
The company’s manufacturing process involves taking raw kraft paper – about 180,000 tons a year -- and feeding that paper to a corrugator to be processed using water, starch and caustic as an adhesive. Heat is generated by a natural gas-fired broiler to combine three to five sheets of the paper into a single or double wall board stock.
WestRock selected Pleasant Prairie for its new box plant to support growing demand from customers in the Great Lakes region, according to
a January announcement from the company. Construction will start this year and be completed in 2025.
WestRock is closing one of its existing plants in North Chicago to open the Pleasant Prairie location.
The company provides sustainable paper-based packaging solutions across multiple sectors including consumer products, food and beverage, health care, e-commerce, industrial products, and more.
