Business News

Sonoco Names Cairns General Manager of European Consumer Packaging

Monday 10. November 2008 - Sonoco (NYSE:SON), one of the largest global packaging companies, today announced that Sean Cairns has been named general manager of the Company's European Consumer Packaging business, according to Eddie Smith, vice president, Europe.

In this position, Cairns will head the Company’s rigid paper packaging business in Europe, including operations in Manchester, United Kingdom, and Lieven, France. He will be based in Manchester and joins Sonoco’s Management Committee.

Cairns comes to Sonoco from Crown Holdings’ Specialty Packaging where he was previously business and development director for Northwest and Central Europe. During his 14-year career with Crown, Cairns held several leadership positions of increasing responsibility including business unit and operations management throughout Europe.

“We’re pleased to have Sean leading our European consumer packaging business,” said Smith. “His experience in business development, operations and process improvement are important in further building our consumer packaging reach throughout Europe.”

Cairns is a time served marine engineer and has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Wales College, Cardiff, Wales, U.K., and an executive MBA from Manchester Business School, U.K., and is a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.