Dive Brief:
- 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.”
Dive Insight:
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.
In 2025, the company divested its flex-therm business and its temperature-assured packaging business. Last year also brought various leadership departures.
During an investor day event in February 2026, Coker had declared the portfolio transformation complete. “The most difficult part of our journey is behind us,” he said.
Haynes has been with Sonoco since 1997 and has rapidly risen through the ranks during the last year. In August, he was appointed president of global consumer packaging amid a restructuring that merged the two geographical divisions for consumer packaging: the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. He had spent less than a year in his prior role leading the Americas consumer packaging segment, which was announced in November 2025.
During an interview with Packaging Dive in February, Haynes noted that the company’s yearslong structural transformation was largely finished, and the simpler organizational structure would unlock value both for the company and its customers.
Sonoco’s filing Monday to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission regarding the leadership transition notes that Haynes will receive an annual base salary of $1.1 million and an annual bonus target equal to 120% of his annual base salary. According to a separate filing earlier this year, Coker had a base salary of more than $1.2 million at the end of 2025, which was unchanged from the prior year.
Sonoco’s Monday filing also notes that the company’s board approved a stock-based retention package for CFO Paul Joachimczyk. The stock will vest in two years as long as Joachimczyk remains with the company. He joined Sonoco as CFO in June 2025, following the departure of former CFO Rob Dillard amid a leadership shakeup.
Sonoco’s news release hinted that leaders might discuss more details about this transition on Tuesday at the Baird Global Industrial Conference.
