Recycling the Paper Mill

On June 2, 2022, the WestRock Paper Mill in Panama City, owned by WestRock Co., the second-largest American packaging company, permanently ceased operations. Once Bay County’s largest employer with approximately 450 workers, the mill was deemed too expensive to maintain, and its main products, heavyweight kraft and fluff pulp, were no longer priorities in the parent company’s strategy to focus on higher-value markets.

Fortunately, SRM Concrete, founded by Melissa and Mike Hollingshead in Smyrna, Tennessee, in 1999, decided this past February to buy the sprawling 300-acre property for $30 million. Today, the family-owned-and-operated company, with headquarters in nearby Murfreesboro, Tennessee, serves customers in 19 states and has more than 8,300 employees. 

Much of the old paper mill is being torn down, but many of the historic buildings are being preserved. Photo by Mike Fender

“We purchased this plant with the intention of creating storage for cement, and we’ll use the other parts of the property for other segments of our business,” explained Ben Endsley, general manager of Hollingshead Cement, one of SRM’s divisions. “We’re in the ready-mix concrete business, but we also have 26 rock quarries, so we’re in the stone and aggregate market as well. We also own things like precast plants and block manufacturing plants, so because of the scale of the property, once we have a full site layout, we’ll kind of do one of everything we do.”

What truly made the Panama City location attractive, according to Endsley, was its access to water, which will allow the company to load and offload raw materials and products. “We’ve already brought in one vessel at the Port of Panama City of some cement that we’re using to supplement some of our local ready-mix production,” he noted. “And eventually we’ll put in a berth to bring vessels and barges into our location.” 

Founded in 1999, SRM is the largest ready-mix concrete supplier in the country with 8,300 team members across 19 states. Photo by Mike Fender

Endsley affirmed that SRM’s decision to move to Bay County was not predicated on any additional considerations. “We have met with the Economic Development Agency, and we met with a lot of local municipalities and officials as far as the site planning and development, but we weren’t lured in by any kind of economic package. That wasn’t any part of the deal.” 

Indeed, the value to the Bay County community will come from SRM in the form of several dozen new jobs, a cleaned-up industrial site and a non-polluting plant that Endsley said will use the greenest products available. 

“The newest cement on the market that we will be importing, once we have the facility up and running, is called 1L cement,” he stated. “It’s a greener alternative. It uses less energy to produce, but it’s still a very strong and durable product.”

And SRM intends to find other ways to create value. “One of our core values is to be a strategic partner with the community,” Endsley shared. “As an employer, you want to be part of the community and be able to give back in different ways. Part of our focus will be on partnering with schools and different civic organizations. We like to focus on children and child development.”

Ben Endsley, general manager of Hollingshead Cement

At present, SRM is in the final phases of naming a demo contractor to take down the paper mill and recycle whatever equipment possible. “The demolition is going to take between 16 and 24 months. That’s one of the early steps before we can really develop the site,” Endsley said. “We’re already using some of the property; we’re importing cement and distributing it to our local ready-mix plants, but we’re not doing that on the scale that we’re going to be able to do once we have the site developed.”

To preserve some of the history of WestRock Paper, which began operations in 1931, SRM plans to maintain some of the older buildings on-site. Endsley said, “I think they add a touch of history. You can’t go anywhere in the town without talking to somebody who didn’t know somebody who was employed at that paper mill. Everybody knows about that site, and everybody has a story to tell. We want to make sure the site continues with that legacy and creates generational jobs in the community. When WestRock closed, they left about nine or 10 people there as caretakers; we employed all of those people right off the bat. And we’re hiring three or four additional people. As the demo goes away, the site will bring in between 40 and 80 jobs once we have everything up and running.”

Though SRM has ready-mix locations all around the Gulf Coast and is focused on expanding its footprint in the market, it also aims to add value to the area. In Endsley’s words, “We want to help the community thrive for years to come and give good jobs to the employees in that town. So, I think it’s going to be a really good fit for us and for the community.”