General Discussion

As consumers have been panic buying toilet paper, shelves at some local supermarkets and drugstores are bare. But how does a manufacturer respond to coronavirus-sparked shortages of this inexpensive commodity?

We reached out to Georgia-Pacific, the paper-products giant owned by Koch Industries, which makes the AngelSoft and Quilted Northern brands, to find out. Koch Industries, one of America’s largest private companies with more than $110 billion in total revenue, is run by Charles Koch, the conservative billionaire behind Americans for Prosperity who’s now worth $40.6 billion by Forbes’ estimates. (His brother David died last summer.)

Consumer-related panic buying due to COVID-19 has caused “a significant increase in orders beginning last week,” Fernando Gonzalez, president of Georgia-Pacific’s consumer business, explained by email. “These increases have been as high as two times our normal demand.” However, Georgia-Pacific also sells its toilet tissue to hotels and businesses, and the B2B part of its business has been softer; the company expects those sales to decline as consumers ditch their business travel and vacation plans.