"S” is for Sonoco

“S” is for Sonoco. This Hartsville-based international packaging manufacturer had its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, when Major James Lide Coker and his son James, Jr. became the first to successfully produce paper from pine wood pulp. The Cokers made a modest investment in equipment and began making cones for the southern textile industry with paper produced by their pulp mill. In 1899, the cone-making enterprise was formally organized as the Southern Novelty Company with Major Coker as president. During the 1920s efforts to diversify into providing packaging solutions for industries besides textiles were intensified. The company changed its name to Sonoco Products Company in 1923. Sonoco is one of the world’s largest packaging companies, with annual sales that grew from $17,000 in 1900 to more than $6 billion in the twenty-first century.