Packaging Corp Mill Explosion Leads To 3 Deaths, Investigation Continues

Packaging Corp Of America PKG announced that an explosion at its DeRidder, Louisiana, paper mill killed three contractors.

The company said the incident happened Wednesday when annual repair work was being performed on piping in the pulp mill area. Packaging Corp is probing the cause of the incident.

At the time of the incident, the mill’s D1 machine was down for its annual outage and the D3 machine was running and continues to operate.

Due to the incident, Packaging Corp expects the annual outage work to be delayed by up to one week and the mill will then resume full operation.

However, sell-side analysts defend Packaging Corp, saying the accident wouldn't cause much of an impact, as the company has business interruption insurance to limit the financial damages and the fire was in a secondary tank.

Shares of Packaging Corp closed Wednesday’s trading at $94.18.