Green Bay Packaging Project PowerPack, Arkansas Kraft Division

Replacing a recovery boiler is one of the hardest things a working pulp mill can attempt. Green Bay Packaging is doing it at Morrilton while the Arkansas Kraft Division keeps making linerboard, in a capital program north of $1 billion that is the largest investment central Arkansas has ever seen.

Project Scope

Project PowerPack replaces the mill’s aging recovery boiler and biomass boiler infrastructure and adds an electric turbine generator, cutting Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and changing how the mill balances its own steam and power. AFRY holds the process and engineering assignment. Koontz Electric, based just up the road, is carrying electrical work on the package. Crews were setting structural steel for the new recovery boiler complex through 2026 and the job remains on schedule for completion in the first quarter of 2028. Peak site headcount runs around 1,200 contractors against an existing plant workforce of about 620.

The enabling work alone tells you the scale. Six counties and the City of Morrilton had to partner with the Arkansas Department of Transportation in 2024 to relocate Highway 113 around the expanded footprint. Green Bay Packaging also bought roughly 300 additional acres, which reads less like a buffer and more like a placeholder for whatever comes after PowerPack.

Why It Matters

Recovery boilers are the beating heart of a kraft mill and among the most safety-critical pressure vessels in heavy industry. Swapping one out on a running site means the outage window, not the erection sequence, drives the whole schedule, and it puts a premium on prefabrication and on getting the tie-ins right the first time. The economics are worth watching too. Containerboard demand has been soft, and a billion-dollar boiler replacement is a bet that the mill’s cost position in 2030 matters more than its earnings in 2026. Adding turbine generation converts a compliance-driven boiler replacement into a partial self-generation play, which is the pattern showing up across pulp and paper as industrial power prices climb. Groundbreaking was held on 3 June 2025 with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders in attendance; 35 permanent jobs come with it.

Project Team & Details