"Reflecting on my first year, I am proud of the International Paper team for embracing transformational change and achieving tremendous progress together," said Andy Silvernail, Chief Executive Officer. "We deployed 80/20, focusing on our most valuable customers and aligning our resources accordingly. We launched key initiatives to drive step-change improvement in our performance, and invested to grow in the most attractive markets. Most recently, we welcomed our DS Smith colleagues and outlined our strategic direction at our Investor Day." "This year's first quarter results reflect higher sales and earnings, primarily driven by the DS Smith acquisition, sales price increases, and cost out," Silvernail added. "We also made good progress on growing our market position in our North American packaging business. Overall market demand, however, was softer than anticipated in both of our regions. As expected, our free cash flow was temporarily impacted by transformation costs and incentive compensation payout. In this uncertain macroeconomic environment, we are focusing on actions within our control as we accelerate our 80/20 execution to drive commercial excellence and cost out across the company."

Sonoco has announced a new research partnership with Clemson University: the Sonoco FRESH (Food Research Excellence for Safety and Health) initiative will develop new technologies and new forms of packaging to optimize the fresh food lifecycle. “Sonoco is committed to serving fresh brands, using packaging to tackle the challenges they face,” said Sonoco President and CEO Jack Sanders. “Optimizing fresh food packaging to extend shelf life and maintain quality makes fresh produce more accessible to communities, and helps brands and retailers extend sales opportunities and eliminate food waste. “Each year, the food industry loses $15.6 billion due to food spoilage at retail. Modifying packaging design to extend shelf life by even one day can recover $1.8 billion of that loss – while feeding more people and reducing waste to landfills.” To establish the multi-disciplinary hub for innovation and research to advance fresh food packaging and distribution, Sonoco will contribute $1.725 million over 5 years. The Company will also sponsor business-driven research projects totaling $1 million over that period. Sonoco FRESH is an extension of the partnership that created the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics at Clemson. Click Read More below for additional information.

Aptar announced that its Activ-Film™ technology was selected to protect a new SARS Rapid Antigen test for COVID-19 that recently received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Aptar CSP Technologies’ Activ-Film™ technology is integrated into the diagnostic kit to protect against moisture and other environmental conditions that could otherwise impact test accuracy. Activ-Film™ leverages Aptar’s proprietary 3-Phase Activ-Polymer™ technology, which provides a broad spectrum of custom-engineered protection in a variety of configurations, such as Activ-Vial™ for housing diagnostics dipsticks and Activ-Tab integrated within diagnostic cassettes. This material science-based active packaging technology is currently used to protect a range of electrochemical, lateral flow and molecular diagnostic test kits on the market today.