[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 66 (Monday, May 10, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY SONOCO!

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                        HON. JOHN M. SPRATT, JR.

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 10, 1999

  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, one hundred years ago today, Major James 
Lide Coker, a Civil War veteran, formed the Southern Novelty Company. 
The South was still agrarian and still starved for capital, but men 
like D.A. Tompkins in Charlotte and Henry Grady in Atlanta envisioned a 
New South. Entrepreneurs like James Lide Coker brought the New South 
into being. Coker perfected a way of producing paper from pulp of 
Southern yellow pine and created a manufacturing process for making 
paper cones in high quantities at low cost. The Customer: textile 
companies then emerging all over the South. Cotton yarn was wound and 
packaged on the paper cones.
  By 1923, the Southern Novelty Company was international, part of a 
joint venture in Great Britain, and the company changed its name to 
Sonoco. From its humble beginning in Hartsville, South Carolina, Sonoco 
has grown into a global packaging leader. Today, Sonoco makes a wide 
spectrum of consumer and industrial products, supplying customers in 85 
countries. It has a network of 275 manufacturing plants on five 
continents, but it has never forgotten its origin. It is still 
headquartered in the same small city where it started, Hartsville, 
South Carolina, which a year ago was named an ``All-American City,'' 
due in no small part of its chief corporate citizen.
  Sonoco packaging touches us every day. It may be a paperboard can of 
frozen orange juice, a container for potato chips, pet food, motor oil, 
or window caulking. It may be a paperboard carton holding medicine, 
cosmetics, or film, or a protective liner sealing foods and beverages. 
And when you use plastic grocery bags or shopping bags, the chances are 
good they were made by Sonoco because Sonoco is a major supplier. 
Sonoco remains a world leader in packaging for industry, still 
producing tubes and cores for textile products like yarn, but also for 
film, paper, and metals. And I should add that Sonoco is a world leader 
and innovator in using recycled materials.
  While Sonoco products are not household names, the company grows by 
helping its customers manufacture and distribute their products to 
consumers around the world. Sonoco ranks number one or number two in 
all of its major product lines.
  How does Sonoco do it? Through one hundred years of commitment to 
innovation and quality; through leadership in paper recycling since 
1920; through constantly seeking out customer feedback; through a 
company mission to be the best, the lowest-cost provider of preferred 
products worldwide; and through excellent managers and a first-rate 
workforce. The bottom-line bears testimony to all of the above. Since 
Sonoco's founding in 1899, the company has averaged an annual increase 
in earnings of 12.4 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, I am proud to represent corporate citizens like Sonoco. 
I sent Sonoco employees around the globe, from Hartsville to Hong Kong, 
our best wishes for a happy 100th birthday, and for many more returns!

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