# Georgia-Pacific One of the largest divisions of [[Koch Industries]] and the consumer-facing face of the Koch empire — the company behind household paper brands **Brawny, Dixie, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, and Sparkle**. Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific makes tissue, paper, pulp, packaging, and building products (gypsum, lumber, OSB). For most Americans who will never knowingly buy a Koch product, a roll of Angel Soft or a pack of Dixie cups is the closest they come to the Koch business empire. ## The 2005 Acquisition [[Koch Industries]] acquired Georgia-Pacific in **2005 for roughly $21 billion** (about $48 per share in cash), one of the largest deals in Koch history and the transaction that took the publicly traded paper giant **private**. Since then it has operated as an independently managed, wholly owned Koch subsidiary. The acquisition was strategically significant: it dramatically diversified Koch beyond petroleum and chemicals into consumer products and building materials, and it removed a large public company from the disclosure regime of the stock market into the privacy of the Koch structure. ## Environmental Record Georgia-Pacific is a recurring subject of environmental and regulatory controversy, frequently cited by critics as emblematic of the Koch approach to regulation: - **Crossett, Arkansas:** The company's paper mill became the center of allegations (featured in the 2016 documentary *Company Town*) linking improper waste disposal to a local cancer cluster. A 2011 complaint alleged the plant discharged tens of millions of gallons per day of paper-mill waste containing ammonia, chloride, and metals. - **Clean Air Act:** In December 2018 the EPA penalized Georgia-Pacific over [[Clean Air Act]] violations at the Crossett mill, requiring six-figure penalties plus millions in pollution-abatement equipment. - **FERC penalty (2023):** The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fined Georgia-Pacific **$1.2 million** for abandoning a natural-gas pipeline without notifying regulators and then misrepresenting the work once it did. ## Why It Matters Here Georgia-Pacific illustrates two KB themes. First, it is a major piece of the **cash engine** ([[Koch Industries]]) whose profits ultimately help underwrite the [[Koch Network]] political operation. Second, its environmental and regulatory record is a concrete instance of the **material interests** behind Koch's well-funded, ideologically framed campaign against environmental regulation and the administrative state — the company's bottom line and the network's anti-regulatory politics point in the same direction. (See [[Koch Industries]] and [[Koch Network]].) ## See Also - [[Koch Industries]] — Parent company - [[Koch Network]] — The political machine the profits help fund - [[Charles Koch]] — Architect of the conglomerate - [[Flint Hills Resources]] · [[Guardian Industries]] — Sibling Koch subsidiaries