Sonoco announced Monday morning that President and CEO Howard Coker will retire as of Dec. 31, having worked for the company for 41 years. He has held the top spot since 2020.
Ernest Haynes, who was recently appointed president of global consumer packaging, will take over as Sonoco’s president and CEO upon Coker’s departure.
“It has been the honor of my career to serve as CEO of Sonoco, a company I have known all my life,” Coker said in a statement Monday. “Now is the right time to hand leadership to the next generation as part of our orderly succession planning process.”
Coker’s departure comes at a time when Sonoco has undergone a string of changes, including M&A, restructurings and other leadership shuffles.
“As CEO, Howard has led Sonoco through a defining period of transformation. He reshaped Sonoco into a more focused company built around scaled, market-leading Consumer and Industrial packaging businesses with a strong balance sheet,” said John Haley, chairman of the board, in the news release.
In February 2024, the company launched a variety of business unit changes, including creating four core businesses: metal packaging, rigid paper containers, industrial packaging and the then-newly combined flexibles and thermoforming unit. Later in 2024, it acquired European metal packaging heavyweight Eviosys.
In its most recent quarterly securities filing, Sonoco disclosed that it had not achieved the “purchasing synergies previously expected to be realized from the Eviosys acquisition.” It cited geopolitical and economic conditions, including tariffs, as well as inflation. Along with other challenging conditions, especially in the European market, this prompted the company to lower its projections for several financial reporting categories, including sales volumes. READ MORE
Source: packagingdive.com
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