Bowater
| Public | |
| Industry | Pulp and paper, wood products |
| Successor | Packaging: Rexam Building Products: VEKA North America: Resolute Forest Products Australia: Carter Holt Harvey |
| Founded | London, England (1881) |
| Founder | William Vansittart Bowater |
| Defunct | 1997 |
| Headquarters | Knightsbridge, London, England |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
William Vansittart Bowater, Thomas Vansittart Bowater, Sir Eric Bowater |
| Products | Newsprint, uncoated groundwood, wood products, recycling services, lumber |
Bowater was a British pulp and paper company, which after post-World War II expansion, through a 30-year period of consolidation now forms the core of a number of globally leading worldwide paper products companies.
Manchester-born William Vansittart Bowater trained as a manager with James Wrigley and Sons, a paper making business based in Manchester. Having been dismissed in 1881 at age 43, Bowater decided to establish himself as a paper agent in London.
In a quickly expanding market, Bowater later secured contracts to supply newsprint to two of the leading publishing entrepreneurs: Alfred Harmsworth, then publisher of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror; and Edward Lloyd, publisher of the Daily Chronicle. The company was subsequently renamed W.V. Bowater and Sons after three of Bowater's sons joined the business, but as an agent the business had few staff: Bowater and his three sons as partner; six clerks; two typists; and an office boy.
After Bowater's death in 1907, in 1910 the company became a private limited liability company, led by Thomas Vansittart Bowater. It expanded into large-scale dealing in waste paper, including the export of surplus newspapers to the Far East to enable their protection during shipping of tea plants. But after Thomas became Lord Mayor of London in 1913, the company was left to be run by his younger brothers, who expanded the business internationally. They established an office in Sydney to export newsprint to Australia, and the Hudson Packaging and Paper Company to market UK newsprint in the United States.
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