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Andy Silvernail calls himself a passionate leader.
He is in the process of changing the culture of International Paper (IP), the legacy global pulp and paper industry brand.
Silvernail developed a dramatic plan designed to increase the company’s margin to 20% from 13% in today’s containerboard and corrugated box business, or as Silvernail calls the segment, its sustainable packaging solutions business.
Silvernail, Fastmarkets 2025 Forest Products North American CEO of the Year, was chosen for this bold plan.
Andrew Silvernail will receive the Fastmarkets North American CEO of the Year Award during the Forest Products North America and International Containerboard Conference. The conference will take place between October 14-16 in Miami. Find out more information on his participation in the event and see the full agenda.
In three years, Silvernail seeks the 20% margin for IP, a company once known for its vast timberlands and pulp and paper mill assets. He envisages US and European packaging sales of $26-$28 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $5.5 billion to $6.0 billion.
In a Fastmarkets interview on Monday August 11, Silvernail sounded confident speaking without haste, and with a go-for-it mentality both for IP’s 65,000 employees and for a defined “customer-centric” focus on top quality products and top service.
Further, Silvernail designed an 80/20 data-driven performance system, placing emphasis on top revenue customers in attractive markets and then investing where business wins are most likely.
The go-for-it approach fits into the structure for the new IP.
Silvernail’s a firm believer in needing to spend capital to grow IP to margin goals and doing so at the same time with cost controls, including underperforming asset disposal.
Already, in his 15 months in office, Silvernail permanently retired the 840,000-tons-per-year Campti, LA, unbleached kraft linerboard mill along with the Georgetown, South Carolina, pulp and paper mill. IP has just sold a small mill in Mexico and has closed 12 US converting and recycling plants.
He stressed that IP’s packaging business was underfunded, which led to the 12-14% margin in packaging the last few years.
“What we’ve done over time is we’ve spread our investment dollars too thin and we haven’t allowed ourselves to really maximize the best assets and our best people,” Silvernail told Fastmarkets.
Now, alongside the mill and plant shutdowns, Silvernail cited two projects that are intended to add output and be key additions for growth: a new corrugator plant in Waterloo, Iowa, and the potential development of a facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.
First, the Waterloo plant is projected to cost $260 million. Silvernail told Fastmarkets that the converting line should be operational in mid- to late-2026. The plant will be well situated with a short freight cost benefit for the containerboard it needs. IP’s large Cedar Rapids containerboard mill complex is just 60 miles (96.5 km) from Waterloo.
The Waterloo plant will focus on protein business, making corrugated boxes for packaging meat. Silvernail added that IP is exploring the new corrugated plant in Salt Lake City, Utah, so that the company will have a “spread” of plants for protein business from West to East. The cost for the Salt Lake City project is not known yet, Silvernail said.
Potentially, some added funding could come from IP’s Global Cellulose Fibers business, which is for sale. IP plans to sell the Global Cellulose Fibers pulp business potentially by year-end. Global Cellulose Fibers is a $2.78 billion business based on its 2024 sales.
Ivy League educated at Dartmouth for his undergraduate degree and then Harvard for his postgraduate degree, Silvernail is a leader who came from a difficult background. Raised in the former IP mill town of Bucksport, Maine, he was at first in a broken home before going to live with his best friend’s family. There, he overcame the early difficulties and succeeded in school.
After college, he worked as an analyst for Fidelity Investments and held executive positions at Rexnord Industries, Newell Rubbermaid and Danaher Corporation. Eventually, he went to IDEX company where he was CEO from 2011 to 2020 before retiring. Silvernail is the former chairman and CEO of Madison Industries and worked at KKR as an executive adviser before joining IP.
A recruiter impressed Silvernail about the open IP CEO position. Silvernail said he spoke to industry people, but that the response from some paper industry participants was not always positive. At first, he thought of the paper industry as the old school industry where the battle to sell a ton of paper was more important than innovating and developing a sustainable business.
As an outsider, he said his taking the job at IP “raised eyebrows,” adding that the pulp and paper industry “didn’t expect to see me.”
Silvernail said he was struck by the pace of change in the industry. He liked the packaging story. Seventy-five percent of US paper and board production is for packaging. He especially liked the business shift to “sustainable packaging” with regional yet also global ties to big brand retail and food companies. Further, during the COVID pandemic in 2020-2022, packaging was held up in noted regard for the e-commerce delivery of food and products to millions working and staying home.
“I didn’t want to repeat what I did before,” Silvernail explained, adding that the packaging business in the US is a “business that needed to be transformed.”
IP is the largest containerboard and corrugated box manufacturer in North America and the second largest in Europe. IP and SmurfitWestrock are the two largest containerboard and corrugated boxmaker companies in the world, based on sales and Fastmarkets research.
Silvernail takes on the top IP job to change the company just as transformation also occurs in the North American containerboard business, several Wall Street analysts who have covered the business for 20 to 30 years told Fastmarkets.
In two unprecedented containerboard deals for $20 billion in the last year, Smurfit Kappa acquired WestRock for $11.2 billion and IP acquired DS Smith for $9.9 billion. In another unprecedented move, US containerboard producers permanently retired 6% of US containerboard capacity with shutdowns of mills and machines in what will amount to just eight months this year.
One Wall Street analyst said Silvernail “has brought energy to the company and enthusiasm to the investor base [even] though [whether] he actually deserves this accolade might not really be apparent for another 12-18 months or even longer.”
In the North America CEO of the Year voting in June, Silvernail finished in front of Tony Smurfit, the Smurfit Westrock CEO who won the Fastmarkets International CEO of the Year award earlier this year.
Silvernail will be honored at the Fastmarkets Forest Products and International Containerboard Conference on October 14-16 in Miami.
The Fastmarkets Forest Products North American CEO of the Year is chosen by financial analysts in the US and Canada. The analysts select the winner based on leadership performance from June 2024 through June 2025.
Silvernail is the sixth containerboard packaging company CEO in the US to win the top executive award in North America in the last 10 years. Other winners included Anthony Pratt of Pratt Industries, Mark Kowlzan of Packaging Corp of America and Steve Voorhees of WestRock.
He is also the fourth IP CEO to win the Fastmarkets North American CEO of the Year award since the awards program started 27 years ago in 1999. Other IP winners included John Faraci, John Dillon and Mark Sutton.
Silvernail says he has been a transformer at companies throughout his career.
For his workers and ultimately for IP customers, Silvernail wants to instill confidence in IP’s skill. He wants to develop trust with workers and customers, or partners, as he calls them. Citing a Forbes story from May 2024, Silvernail said “trust is the currency of business.”
He wants IP employees “coming here to be the best” and wanting to be “here to be the best,” Silvernail told Fastmarkets.