Pratt Industries, the world’s largest privately held paper and packaging company based in Melbourne, Australia, announced in mid-July that it is expanding and opening a Mill Division at the Port of Shreveport-Bossier. The company, with U. S. operations headquartered near Atlanta, currently has 120 locations worldwide and 43 in the United States.

The new mill, which is scheduled to begin operations by December 2008, will recycle the fiber of old corrugated containers and mixed paper waste from large cities as the raw material for corrugated material. The new plant represents a $150 million investment and adds 150 part- and full-time jobs.

The mill is designed to produce 100 percent recycled container board boxes and will be the largest green manufacturing project located in Northwest Louisiana. Users of the product will be the value-added container board packaging industry. The plant will consume 280,000 tons per year of mixed waste and 150,000 tons of old corrugated containers. The prime feedstock is waste, which would otherwise be sent to a landfill.

“Beating out Dallas on this project is something we can all be proud of and hopefully a great indicator of just how far we’ve come as a region,” said Bobby Jelks, chairman of the Northwest Louisiana Economic Development Foundation.

The company currently employs 8,000 workers in the United States and Australia. It is the seventh-largest corrugated packaging company in the United States, with manufacturing facilities in more than a dozen states.

The company is committed to environmental management by Harvesting the Urban Forest™, and its parent company Vay Industries of Australia have been recognized around the world for their environmental standards and efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle.

In Winnfield, about 60 miles southeast of Shreveport, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration recently approved a $1.5 million grant for a public works program in rural Winn Parish. The grant will be used for infrastructure upgrades in support of the Jeld-Wen door manufacturing facility currently under construction near Winnfield, La.

Grant applicants Winn Parish Police Jury and Valley Electric Membership Corp. of Natchitoches, La., worked with local, state and federal officials and the Louisiana Department of Economic Development (LED) to secure the grant.

The infrastructure resulting from the grant will serve Jeld-Wen's plant, which is expected to create 75 new jobs and generate $86.6 million in private investment in Winn Parish.

Rebuilding and Redeveloping

The former Kaiser Aluminum site near Baton Rouge, closed for more than 23 years, is currently being developed by CEMUS LLC as a shipping, storage and distribution center. The 65-acre site is just south of the U.S. Highway 190 bridge over the Mississippi River. With its earlier purchase of a 22-acre tract just north of the bridge, it now gives the project a half-mile of river frontage in an industrial corridor near Baton Rouge.

This industrial property with deep-water access is strategically located between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Baton Rouge is the farthest north an ocean going vessel with up to 40 feet of draft may safely navigate up the Mississippi River.

LED and the Baton Rouge Area Chamber have been actively marketing the site to potential industries. The first two tenants of the distribution center are River Mountain Quarries and Southern Ionics Inc., which will develop and occupy a total of 22.5 acres.

CEMUS has invested $14.5 million in the purchase of the property and plans another $5 million investment in dock repairs and improvements to an existing warehouse.

"We believe this river frontage and deep-water pier is of strategic importance to America's heartland, as well as to the Baton Rouge area community," said Garry Lewis, co-owner of CEMUS. "LED did an incredible job working with us to introduce our site to current and prospective tenants."

River Mountain Quarries, a division of Pine Bluff Sand and Gravel Co. of Pine Bluff, Ark., is developing 13 acres as a crushed stone and riprap yard with the material supplied and delivered by company-owned boats and barges, and available to supply the construction industry and the public in the Baton Rouge area.

Southern Ionics Inc., of West Point, Miss., will construct an $11 million plant that will produce aluminum materials for water treatment, catalyst and alumina manufacturing. Southern Ionics will occupy 9.5 acres.

Earlier this year, HSA Commercial Real Estate began construction of a 495,000 square foot Baton Rouge West Distribution Center in Port Allen, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge. Situated on nearly 42 acres of land and less than 1 mile from interstates 10, 110 and 12, the project will consist of a 275,000 square foot building and a 220,000 square foot building, both divisible to 15,000 square feet.

Available in the first quarter of 2008, Baton Rouge West Distribution Center is located in the Baton Rouge West industrial market, the furthest inland deep-water port on the Mississippi River.

The project is located in the Katrina Gulf Opportunity Zone, which offers qualifying employers 5-6 percent rebates on payroll for 10 years, 4 percent sales tax rebates on machinery purchases, and 40 percent Employee Tax Retention Credit and tax credits for job creation.

HSA owns the property directly next door, which is currently leased to the United States Postal Service (USPS)and serves as the Southern Louisiana mail distribution center, and purchased the additional 41.62 acres several years ago for future development. HSA leased the property to USPS in 2005 after its New Orleans distribution center was rendered inoperable by Hurricane Katrina.