Sonoco targets $6 billion in sales by end of 2012

-- Converting Magazine, 12/11/2007

Packaging giant Sonoco expects to grow its sales to between $5.5 billion and $6 billion by the end of 2012 by increasing organic sales; expanding geographically as well as further into consumer-product packaging; and by making strategic acquisitions.

Sonoco chairman, president and chief executive officer Harris E. DeLoach, Jr., and Charles J. Hupfer, senior vice president and chief financial officer, outlined the new five-year growth strategy for the company at Sonoco’s annual conference with the New York investment community on Dec. 7.

“We’re focused on changing the mix of our business from a current ratio of 51% consumer and 49 percent industrial to approximately 60/40 consumer and industrial,” DeLoach says.

Sonoco’s Consumer Packaging and Services businesses are projecting to grow at a compound average growth rate of approximately 6.5 percent over the next five years, DeLoach says. This will be accomplished by developing new, innovative products and services to meet changing consumer needs; providing cradle-to-cradle sustainability solutions; promoting cross-selling of products and services from Sonoco’s diverse mix of businesses to its large consumer-product customers; and by pursing strategic acquisitions.

Through the third quarter of 2007, DeLoach says Sonoco generated record sales from new products of approximately $70 million. “Our goal over the next five years is to annually generate $125 million to $150 million in new product sales,” he says.