BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: 2020-BEYOND
Growing a 125-year-old company takes more than determination. It takes digging deep into your company’s identity of endurance and tackling all the challenges that come up along the way. Sonoco has held this belief since the very start: We find a way, no matter what.
Sonoco is what we are today thanks to our people’s commitment to finding new solutions and better paths or, as we like to say, Better Packaging. Better Life. This drive traces back to a philosophy CEO James Coker expressed in 1932 when he talked about our restless search for “a product or service, or both, that fills the need better than any other product or service” and “justifies its purpose and use every time it is bought … a product backed by the faith, honor and integrity of its maker.”
“These things,” he concluded, “are what we are striving for when we say we will manufacture quality products.”
On our 75th anniversary, then-President and CEO Charles Coker Jr. connected that drive to the founders of Sonoco and other successful enterprises of the day—who he said had flaws, like any group of people: “But the remarkable part was they appeared to be undaunted by failure. They accepted it, brushed themselves off, stood up tall again and began anew.”
That indomitable spirit inspires us to do everything we can to capture lightning in a bottle on the factory floor and in spaces dedicated to research, such as the Sonoco Studio. As Harris DeLoach, then our CEO, put it in 2006, “Research drives change and we have to be able to change to compete more effectively.”
In the 21st century, Sonoco continues to draw on that creative drive as we expand our footprint around the world.
It’s rare for such an organization to remain dedicated to its core drive for 125 years. It’s remarkable for an organization to build that drive into their growth. But it’s not exceptional for Sonoco. It’s who we are.