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MeadWestvaco to relocate headquarters
to the Richmond area
Virginia Business
March 2006 Richmond burnished its reputation as a home for Fortune
500 companies with the announcement that MeadWestvaco
Corp. is moving to town.
The company plans to relocate its headquarters from
Stamford, Conn., to the Richmond area by this summer,
creating 400 new jobs. The company initially will have
temporary quarters while it looks for a permanent site
to occupy by summer 2008.
MeadWestvaco is ranked 267th on the Fortune 500 list.
It will be the seventh company from the current list
to have headquarters in the area. Richmond-based Genworth
Financial Corp., which was spun off by General Electric
Co. two years ago, is also expected to join the Fortune
list when it is next published in April.
Mead Westvaco produces packaging, specialty papers
and specialty chemicals used in a variety of industries.
The company was formed in 2002 in a merger between
Mead Corp. and Westvaco Corp.
Westvaco, founded in West Virginia in 1888, has many
ties to Richmond and Virginia. In 1900, the company
built a paperboard mill in Covington that is still
in operation. It also has a consumer packaging plant
in Louisa County and a sheeting plant in Low Moor.
The company also once had plants in Richmond, but the
last of those were closed in 2003.
MeadWestvaco employs about 200 people at existing
administrative offices in the Boulders office park
in Chesterfield County. Those employees will join the
headquarters staff when the relocation is completed.
The company received an incentive
package that included a $2 million award from the
Governor’s Opportunity
Fund, a $4 million Virginia Economic Development Incentive
Grant and training assistance through the state Department
of Business Assistance’s Workforce Services Jobs
Investment Program.
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