Smurfit Westrock (SW) FY2025 results: revenue $31.2 billion, up 47.7% on the year

Smurfit Westrock was created in July 2024 by combining Smurfit Kappa, an integrated corrugated packaging manufacturer in Europe with a pan-regional presence in Latin America, and WestRock in North American corrugated and consumer packaging. The holding company was registered in Ireland in 2017 as Cepheidway Limited, re-registered as an Irish public limited company and renamed before the combination completed, with no operations of its own until then. Its shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on the London Stock Exchange under the international commercial companies secondary listing category of the Official List. It makes paper-based packaging through a vertically integrated system that takes wood or recovered fibre, turns it into board and converts the board into packaging.

What the products are

Containerboard is the intermediate material for corrugated sheet, made up of linerboard and medium. Linerboard forms the inner and outer layers and is made from virgin fibre, called kraftliner, or recovered paper, called testliner, with recycled old corrugated cases the main source, and it can be surface treated with white, mottled or bleached pulp to improve printing. Medium forms the fluted inner layer and is mostly made from recovered paper. A corrugator flutes the medium, glues it between linerboard and cuts the sheet to the customer's dimensions, and the sheets become containers and displays that protect food, paper, health and beauty goods and other consumer and industrial products. Paperboard goes mainly into folding cartons and other consumer packaging, can be unbleached, coated or fully bleached, and can carry specialty properties such as grease masking and microwaveability. The company also makes solidboard and solidboard packaging, graphic board, kraft paper, paper sacks and bag-in-box.

The footprint

Operations run in 40 countries, mostly in North America, Latin America and Europe, with some in Asia, Africa and Australia. There are 57 paper mills, 450 converting plants, of which 329 convert containerboard into corrugated containers and 84 convert paperboard into consumer packaging or make leaflets and labels, 70 recovered fibre facilities, two wood procurement operations in Europe, two forestry operations in Latin America, 57 distribution facilities in North America and 30 other production sites.

North America

The North America segment covers the United States, Canada and Mexico and was 58.5% of net sales to external customers in 2025. Its 27 mills include both integrated virgin and recycled fibre mills making containerboard, paperboard and specialty grades including kraft paper and market pulp, and most of that output feeds the company's own converting plants, of which 152 make corrugated packaging. In 2025 the North American containerboard mills produced approximately 9.3 million tons and the paperboard mills approximately 3.2 million tons. Paper not used internally is sold through commercial paper operations into corrugated packaging, folding carton, food service, liquid packaging and commercial print markets. Recycling operations in the segment run as a procurement function, sourcing recycled fibre for the mill system.

Europe and Latin America

The Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific segment has 21 mills across 22 European countries, with the main operations in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden and Austria, plus a corrugated plant in Morocco, a mill and plant in India, consumer packaging in China, Japan and Australia and four bag-in-box plants outside Europe. It was 34.8% of external net sales in 2025 and ran approximately 10% long on paper, producing more than its own converting plants consumed. The LATAM segment, where the company has operated continuously since 1986, has nine mills in Brazil, Colombia and Argentina producing approximately 1.5 million tons in 2025, of which containerboard was approximately 1.3 million, and 27 corrugated plants in eight countries plus Puerto Rico that shipped approximately 23 billion square feet. It was 6.7% of net sales.

Customers and people

The packaging carries processed and fresh food, agricultural products, beverages, electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, along with higher value-added work such as enhanced graphics for point-of-sale displays and shelf-ready packaging, and most of what was sold in 2025 went to the fast-moving consumer goods sector. Products are generally made to customer order, and no individual customer was more than 10% of net sales in 2025. At 31 December 2025 the company employed approximately 97,000 people across those 40 countries, approximately 50,000 in North America, 36,500 in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, and 10,500 in Latin America.

From Smurfit Westrock's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 27 February 2026: read the full 10-K.