[5] It was one of North America's leading producers of corrugated and consumer packaging and recycling solutions, with annualized net sales of approximately $10 billion.

The company employed approximately 26,000 people and operated more than 245 facilities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and China.

[citation needed] The 25-year-old Morris had been a printer and part-time Presbyterian minister when he went to work in 1926 for Edwin J. Schoettle, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, industrialist who owned a group of box and printing companies that bore his name.

He also traveled along the eastern seaboard, explaining to meat packers his discovery that they could avoid shrinkage of their hot dogs by putting them in Schoettle's boxes instead of stringing them up like bananas.

Using Smith's presses, die-cutters, and other box making equipment during the evening, Morris began servicing two anchor customers who knew him from his Philadelphia days.

In 1944, another branch was opened in Jacksonville, Florida, where the company produced cardboard anti-radar devices for World War II American troops and popcorn boxes for movie theater owners.

Morris's purchase of Rock City Box Co. put him in contact with one of its suppliers and his future merger partner: Tennessee Paper Mills.

Although the founders originally planned to make board from wheat straw, they turned instead to wastepaper as the primary raw material; thus Tennessee Paper became the first recycled paperboard mill in the South.

Beginning in 1954, however, Tennessee Paper began losing customers to companies manufacturing lower-cost folding cartons and corrugated and plastic containers.

Rock City opened not only small set-up and folding carton plants but also facilities in Livingston and Milan, Tennessee, to meet the packaging needs of shirtmakers.

Meanwhile, in order to meet the competition, Tennessee Paper began buying customers to assure continued markets for its paperboard products.

The Crescent Box & Printing Co. of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was acquired in 1973 and Clevepak Corporation's Conway, Arkansas, folding carton plant in 1974.

In 1982 RockTenn's sales volume reached $133 million and its production of recycled paperboard peaked at 180,000 tons, most of which it used itself in the manufacture of folding cartons and containers and corrugated boxes.

Its many customers included Coca-Cola, DuPont and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which it serviced from facilities in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas with a workforce of 1,700 people.

RockTenn made its biggest acquisition yet in 1983, when it paid $40 million to buy 11 Clevepak Corporation plants, seven of which were making partitions to protect glass and plastic containers.

Currey said the acquisition would allow RockTenn to capture about one-fourth of the partition market, raise annual revenue to more than $200 million, and increase production of recycled paperboard to 235,000 tons.

An analysis in Barron's described RockTenn's balance sheet as "attractive" and said the company was "more soundly financed than many in its field," noting that long-term debt of $51.6 million was only one year's cash flow.

Although calling the offering somewhat pricey at $16.50 a share, it noted that "RockTenn's emphasis on recycling makes it well-suited to customers wishing to appear environmentally responsible, and could also prove profitable if use of woodlands is restricted."

Officers and directors of RockTenn still controlled about 71 percent of the combined voting power of Class A and B common stock after the offering.

In December 1993, RockTenn paid $35 million for Les Industries Ling, a Canadian company that used recycled paperboard to make folding cartons.

The newly acquired plant, which was to serve as the principal supplier of recycled clay-coated paperboard for RockTenn's Vermont mill, became the company's second largest folding carton facility.

The acquisition propelled RockTenn into the number two position among producers of folding cartons in North America and also made the company the leading manufacturer of recycled paperboard in the United States.

RockTenn followed up with two smaller deals in mid-1997, adding Wright City, Missouri-based Rite Paper Products, Inc., a producer of laminated recycled paperboard products primarily for the furniture industry, and the Davey Company, a manufacturer of high-density recycled paperboard mainly used in book covers and binders that operated mills in Aurora, Illinois; and Jersey City, New Jersey.

Although the purchase of Waldorf pushed RockTenn's revenues past the $1 billion mark for the first time in 1997, difficulties in the integration process resulted in a depressed profit figure of $16.1 million.

Acquisition activity continued in 2003 with the purchase of Cartem Wilco Group Inc., a privately held Canadian maker of folding cartons and specialty packaging, for $65.3 million.

Cartem Wilco, which operated plants in Montreal and Quebec City, also produced folding cartons for food packaging and consumer products.

[9] Rock-Tenn Co. agreed to acquire U.S. rival MeadWestvaco Corp. in a deal valued at about $9.2 billion to create the world’s second-largest packaging company.