Gaylord Container Corporation

Gaylord Container Corporation (: GCR) was an American integrated manufacturer of packaging materials, primarily corrugated containers. Operating from 1986 until 2002, most of the company's facilities were originally part of Crown Zellerbach's container division. Based in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago, Gaylord Container completed its initial public offering in July 1988 and was listed on the . After less than sixteen years as a company, it was acquired by a competitor, Temple-Inland, in early 2002, which was acquired by International Paper a decade later in 2012.

Gaylord Container was a by-product of the hostile takeover of Crown Zellerbach by Sir James Goldsmith in July 1985, which resulted in the break-up of the San Francisco-based forest products corporation in May 1986. The more profitable manufacturing assets (fine paper mills) were sold to the James River Corporation of Richmond, Virginia (which merged with Fort Howard and became Fort James in 1997, then was acquired by Georgia-Pacific in 2000). The less profitable container division (brown paper) of CZ became "Gaylord Container," and after a brief period as a limited partnership, was sold in November 1986 for $260 million to a group of Midwest investors led by Warren Hayford (b. 1929) and Marvin Pomerantz (1930–2008). They headed Mid-America Packaging, a single kraft paper mill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, acquired from Weyerhaeuser in December 1985 for $28 million. Soon after the acquisition of the former Crown Zellerbach assets, the headquarters of Gaylord Container were moved from One Bush Street in San Francisco to Illinois.