WestRock sells health and beauty unit for $1B

Norcross firm to focus on core paper and packaging business.

WestRock Co. said it has reached a deal to sell its health and beauty-related business to a Stamford, Conn., packaging manufacturer, Silgan Holdings, for $1.03 billion.

WestRock said Monday that the companies are expected to complete the transaction by the end of March. Silgan makes metal and plastic containers for food and other consumer products.

WestRock, a paper and packaging company, is itself the product of a 2015 merger between Georgia-based RockTenn Corp. and Virginia-based Mead-Westvaco.

The combined company, with about 39,000 employees, is headquartered in Richmond, Va., but also has what it calls a “home office” in Norcross, where Chief Executive Steve Voorhees and other top executives work.

About 2,400 WestRock employees work in metro Atlanta, including about 1,760 in its home office operations at two sites in Norcross and another in Duluth.

WestRock said it is selling the health-related business to concentrate on its core paper and packaging business. The unit it is selling, which makes plastic dispensers and other plastic packaging, had $560 million in revenue, compared to WestRock’s total revenue of $14.1 billion last year.

“We have a constant strategic focus at WestRock on aligning our portfolio and resources around our core paper and packaging solutions businesses,” said Voorhees, chief executive officer of WestRock. He said the sale to Silgan “is the next step in this process.”

WestRock said it expects the sale to net about $1 billion in aftertax proceeds for the company. As part of the deal, Silgan is also assuming a foreign pension liability of about $25 million.