CELCO

Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (also called CELCO or ARAUCO) is a Chilean wood pulp, engineered wood and forestry company controlled by Anacleto Angelini's economic group; Empresas Copec. In 2006 CELCO/ARAUCO had five pulp mills in Chile and one in Argentina. Apart from pulp mills, CELCO/ARAUCO has 4 engineered wood manufacturing plants in Chile, 2 in Argentina and 2 in Brazil.

The company was founded in September 1979 as result of the fusion of Celulosa Arauco S.A. (1967) and Celulosa Constitución S.A. (1969). Both companies had been privatized during the Pinochet Era from CORFO in 1977 and 1979 respectively.

In May 2009 Arauco and the Finnish company Stora Enso announced a € 253 million deal that would make their joint venture the largest landowner in Uruguay.

In September 2009 Arauco purchased the Brazilian panel company Tafisa Brasil in a deal worth US$227m.

Beginning in 2004, and just months after the opening of CELCO's Valdivia plant, thousands of black-necked swans in the internationally protected Ramsar site and national reserve Carlos Anwandter in Chile died or migrated. The Valdivia pulp mill, located upriver, was widely blamed. The mill is located near the city of Mariquina and discharges directly into the Cruces River which feeds the wetlands. The company had been dumping more dioxins and heavy metals than had been approved by the regulating agencies into the river from a waste tube that had been approved by the authorities. It had also been producing far above levels approved in its Environmental Impact Assessment, and was cited for multiple violations of environmental and health laws. The scandal prompted Celco's chief executive to resign in June 2005 and the company to pledge to adopt cleaner technologies. The plant was temporarily closed by authorities but then allowed to reopen two months later at limited production capacity. Several legal actions were finally settled in the company's favor at the Chilean Supreme Court. However, it later was revealed that this decision was based on a report that CELCO had itself produced and falsely claimed was authored by the University of Concepcion. This caused Chile's president Ricardo Lagos to declare that the company had gone too far and was harming the country's image.