CMPC Packaging Sale in Chile Hands Smurfit Westrock a US$420 Million Business

CHILE · BUSINESS

The CMPC packaging sale hands Smurfit Westrock a Chilean paper mill and three box plants for US$420 million, subject to competition approval.

What changes hands

Empresas CMPC has agreed to sell its Chilean containerboard and corrugated packaging business to Smurfit Westrock. The price is US$420 million. Both companies announced the deal on 23 September 2026.

The description matters more than it looks. This is not only the box plants. It includes the Puente Alto paper mill near Santiago, with a machine of roughly 250,000 tonnes a year. Containerboard is the heavy paper that corrugated boxes are made from, so the buyer gets the raw material as well as the conversion.

The corrugated plants are at Buin, Til Til and Osorno. Chimolsa, which makes moulded fibre containers such as egg trays, is part of the package. So is a recovery network with 12 paper and board collection points.

Two legal entities carry the business: Envases Impresos Cordillera and Chimolsa. About 1,500 people work in it. Smurfit Westrock says it will pay from its own liquid resources, rather than raising debt for the purchase.

Who is selling, and who is buying

CMPC is one of Chile’s largest industrial groups, controlled by the Matte family. Its core business is pulp and paper. Its chief executive framed the sale as concentrating capacities and resources where the company has greater scale and competitive advantage.

That is the language of a group narrowing its focus. CMPC keeps its pulp operations and sheds a downstream packaging arm. The company describes the move as part of a long-term strategy toward a more agile structure.

Smurfit Westrock is travelling in the other direction. It was formed by combining the Irish group Smurfit Kappa with the American company WestRock. It has been assembling packaging assets across several markets since.

Tony Smurfit, its president and chief executive, said opportunities to acquire a business like this one are rare. He credited CMPC with nurturing and growing it over many decades. That is a buyer’s framing of a deal it has just signed, and worth reading as such.

The price, and two ways of counting it

US$420 million is the headline figure. On its own it says little, because the size of a price only means something next to the earnings behind it. What it represents therefore depends on who does the arithmetic, and the two sides use different measures.

EBITDA is the usual yardstick in deals like this. It stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. In plain terms it is the cash a business generates before financing costs and accounting charges are taken out.

Chilean coverage and CMPC’s own framing put the price at about 7.6 times EBITDA for the twelve months to June 2026. Smurfit Westrock says it is under 6 times adjusted EBITDA, counting the savings it expects from combining the operations with its own.

Both figures are real and neither is wrong. They are not the same measure, because one counts the business as it trades today and the other counts it as the buyer expects it to trade later. Averaging them would produce a number that nobody has published.

One figure is missing entirely. The revenue of the divested unit was not disclosed in the coverage reviewed for this article. Without it, an outside reader cannot test either multiple independently.

What happens next, and what it means locally

The deal is signed, not done. CMPC filed it as a hecho esencial, a material event notice, with the CMF on 23 September 2026. The CMF is the Comisión para el Mercado Financiero, the regulator that supervises listed Chilean companies.

Clearance must also come from the Fiscalía Nacional Económica, the national economic prosecutor known as the FNE. It is Chile’s competition authority. Customary closing conditions apply on top, and both companies expect completion in the first half of 2027.

For the roughly 1,500 employees, the immediate answer is that nothing changes. CMPC continues to run the operations until closing. No announcements about jobs, plants or contracts have been made. A competition review of this kind normally takes months, so the uncertainty is likely to last into next year.

For businesses that buy boxes in Chile, what changes is ownership rather than supply. A larger international group would control one mill and three converting plants that serve Chilean manufacturers and exporters. Whether that affects pricing is a question for after the regulator has ruled, not before.

Sources

• Smurfit Westrock release, via Business Wire syndication
• Diario Financiero
• La Tercera / Pulso
• BioBioChile

FAQ

More: Chile news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is Smurfit Westrock buying?

It is buying CMPC’s Chilean containerboard and corrugated business, not the box plants alone. That includes the Puente Alto paper mill, plants at Buin, Til Til and Osorno, the moulded fibre maker Chimolsa, and a 12-point recovery network.

Why are two different EBITDA multiples being reported?

Because the two sides measure different things. Chilean coverage cites about 7.6 times EBITDA for the year to June 2026, while Smurfit Westrock cites under 6 times adjusted EBITDA after expected savings. Both are genuine and they are not interchangeable.

When will the sale actually close?

Both companies expect completion in the first half of 2027. It requires approval from Chile’s competition prosecutor, the FNE, plus customary conditions. Until then CMPC continues to operate the business.

Does this change anything for the 1,500 employees?

Not yet. No announcements have been made about jobs, plants or contracts. CMPC remains the operator until the transaction closes.