Sonoco Recycling Opens New, Larger Facility in Charleston

Date: January 14, 2008

Source: Sonoco Recycling

Sonoco Recycling Opens New, Larger Facility in Charleston

Public Tours Available January 15-18, 2008; Open House 2 p.m. January 18

Sonoco (NYSE: SON), one of the largest diversified global packaging companies, has relocated its Charleston, S.C., recycling operation from 20 Braswell Street to a new, state-of-the-art materials recycling facility 1.5 miles away at 2025 Tellico Road in North Charleston.

"Our new North Charleston facility is larger—a nearly 30,000 square foot building on a 5-acre site—and much more efficient than our former location," said Myles Cohen, vice president and general manager of Sonoco Recycling, the Sonoco business unit formerly known as Paper Stock Dealers. "Its additional space and improved productivity will allow us to process and warehouse a larger volume of recyclables than we've been able to handle in the past. This new capability will benefit the community and our Company through increased environmental sustainability."

Sonoco Recycling's new Charleston facility accepts and processes most corrugated boxes and other grades of paper materials, metals and plastics, and will have an annual recycling capability of approximately one-quarter of a billion pounds of recyclable materials. The facility accepts curbside material delivered by the public and offers flatbed pick up of baled material, van service for loose, palletized or baled material and roll-off service for 30- and 40-yard open and closed top containers. Sonoco, which processes and uses many of these recycled materials to produce recycled paperboard at its South Carolina paper mills, then uses that paperboard to produce new consumer and industrial packaging, making Sonoco one of the few cradle-to-cradle suppliers of packaging in the industry.

"One of the strategic benefits of this location is its proximity to the Port of Charleston," said Cohen. "Recovered paper is the number one product exported from the United States, and this facility will expand Sonoco's capability to export recovered paper to Asia and India."

Annually, Sonoco Recycling collects and processes about 3.5 million tons of recyclable materials through 46 locations in North America and Europe, using a fleet of trucks with 1,300 trailers and a team of recycling professionals, many of whom are experts in waste management and manufacturing process improvement.

The public is invited to tour the new facility January 15-18. Interested individuals should call +843/577-6840 to schedule a private tour. The public is also invited to an Open House at the recycling facility from 2-5 p.m., Friday, January 18. Individuals interested in attending should call +843/577-6840 to RSVP.

About Sonoco

Sonoco, founded in 1899, is a global manufacturer of industrial and consumer products and provider of packaging services, with more than 330 operations in 35 countries serving customers in 85 nations. Additional information about Sonoco is available at www.sonoco.com.

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