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I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.

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I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.

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I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.

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Many different roads lead to the far-ranging facilities of Container Corporation of America.

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And on any given morning, most of them represent a new and unfamiliar course to those who are new to the company.

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To them, the road to Container Corporation is lined with a strangeness and uncertainty common to a new working environment.

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This is the situation you have been experiencing lately.

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And it is the purpose of this communication to achieve a better understanding of your relationship to us and ours to you.

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You were here at Container because of a mutual choice.

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We chose you because we learned enough about you to make a positive judgment on your capabilities, present and potential,

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to contribute to the overall performance of an established high-performance team.

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You chose us for what we must assume were equally good and practical reasons.

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At this point, we probably know more about you than you know about us.

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Now it's your turn to get a sharper, more complete understanding of who your fellow team members are

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and what all of us, including you, are doing at Container Corporation of America.

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By now, you are generally aware of the fact that we are in the packaging business.

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You may even know that we are the world's largest producer of paperboard packaging

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and that we are also a principal manufacturer of plastics packaging.

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But there are some larger dimensions that you should know about.

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Let's start with some basics.

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First of all, we are a leadership organization.

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We are leaders in an important industry, which our first corporate generation did much to establish.

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Secondly, we are a creative organization.

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We apply our creative resources to problems that concern not only many basic industries,

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but the broad general public served by these industries.

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Thirdly, and in many ways more importantly, we are a respected organization.

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We are respected not just by our industry peers and by a wide range of customers we serve,

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but by important segments of the society who have high and continuing regard

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for the contributions we make to the larger interests that work for the common good.

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Strictly speaking, our name says what we do.

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One would expect Container Corporation to make containers,

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and we do make many millions of them annually in great variety.

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But neither you nor anybody else could just come in off the street and buy a hundred containers or 10,000.

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The reason is simple. We don't stock containers.

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Ours is a custom business, and the millions of containers we make are made to order.

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Very often, in fact, the containers provided represent only one element of the total solution

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to the distribution and marketing problems affecting the project involved.

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Consequently, the containers you have been casually aware of all your life,

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in your neighborhood drug store, department store, and supermarket,

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are largely taken for granted by the consuming public.

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This is a good thing, really, because the package has to be an extension of the product it contains

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and has to function in the interests of that product if it is to fulfill its multiple responsibilities

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in production, distribution, and consumer environments.

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This brings up the achievement of which we are proudest.

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Container Corporation's leading role in making packaging the crucial link between the producer and the consumer.

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The importance of this link is difficult to exaggerate.

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In our first half century of corporate life, our nation has become increasingly urbanized.

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Consequently, as population has expanded, it has moved farther from the sites of production,

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even as its demands for the fruits of production have continued to grow.

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This has placed an ever-increasing burden on the distribution and marketing process

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essential to both sides, producers and consumers.

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It also presented a great opportunity and a great challenge to the packaging industry.

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It has always been the goal of Container Corporation to support the marketing and distribution success

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of organizations of all sizes and specializations.

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By helping them succeed, we directly support the free enterprise system that supports us all.

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How we rose to this combination of opportunity and challenge

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is a much longer story than we can document in detail here.

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But we can sketch in some highlights.

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And a good place to begin is with the marvelous material

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which is the primary basis of our packaging success.

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Paperboard.

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Ask us to define paperboard and we would say that paperboard is paper with muscle,

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incorporating all of the built-in communication capacities of paper.

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So long and so well regarded for these properties,

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with the addition of strength and resistance qualities required for versatile, practical, economical product packaging.

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Paperboard is also light in weight, variable in structure,

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and is limitless in innovative application, as creative imagination is limitless.

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It is appropriate to note that the earlier packaging material which paperboard replaced was wood,

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produced by mature trees like other lumber products.

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Natural grades of paperboard also come from trees,

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but from much younger trees, grown in a few years,

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harvested and continually replenished by new growth,

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much in the manner of agricultural crops.

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The paperboard is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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and is made of wood,

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which are first mixed in a 98% water solution

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and then reformed during a very fast trip through the papermaking machine

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into an entirely different solid state, paperboard,

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embodying a vast new range of capabilities.

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Paper and paperboard share an additional all-important advantage,

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especially valuable in these times of critical material shortages.

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After almost any of many uses, paper and paperboard can be recycled,

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reduced again to their fibrous elements, remixed with water,

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and reformed into another generation of quality packaging material,

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further conserving and extending the usefulness of natural growth.

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So the solid to liquid to solid cycle goes on and on,

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with solid gains for all sides in the process.

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We can speak about this recycling process with conviction,

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because it has been a basic part of our paperboard manufacture

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since Container Corporation was established in 1926.

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Later developments and refinements have brought us to our present position

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as the nation's leading recycler of waste paper.

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But our moves to meet ecological concerns go far beyond recycling,

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to application of the fullest measure of available technological resources

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to support air and water preservation in our mill and fabrication plant locations.

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Response to challenge has always been a hallmark of our company.

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The motivating vision of our founder and first chief executive officer, Walter P. Pepke,

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was that paperboard packaging could and would successfully challenge wood

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for dominance in the packaging field.

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And ultimately, paperboard did prove to be a far better packaging material than wood could ever be.

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But before more than a small start could be made on that course,

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the Great Depression was in full swing and companies were failing on all sides.

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Fortunately, Pepke's bright young management team brought their organization safely through those darkest of times

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and continued with expansionist moves that strengthened the corporation to fully meet the biggest challenge of all,

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the tremendous demands World War II would make on packaging.

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Looking back now, the ease with which the post-war growth was accomplished seems natural enough.

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The challenging experiences of their first 20 years gave Container Corporation management a lot of maturity and confidence to build upon.

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Before the decade of the 40s was complete, Container Corporation was not only a nationwide organization,

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but had expanded to international stature with facilities in Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico.

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The rest, as they say, is history. And very upbeat history it is, too.

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By the end of our first half century, annual sales were near the $1 billion mark.

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But more important to you than our very successful first 50 years is the evidence of continuing growth potential,

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which will provide expanding career opportunities in all areas.

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Let's look at these opportunities from the viewpoint of the whole organization and from the viewpoint of the individual.

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First, the organization. Today, Container Corporation is the world's largest producer of paperboard packaging,

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including folding cartons, shipping containers, composite cans, and fiber drums.

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In addition, we are a leading producer of industrial plastic drums,

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a type of packaging unmatched for the handling and transport of chemicals and related products.

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Currently, Container Corporation operates nearly 150 major facilities,

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90 plus in the United States and the rest in Latin America and Western Europe.

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And on the geographic scale, it is interesting to note that as the sun sets on our properties in California, Oregon, and Washington,

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it has already risen for another day over Anzio, Italy, our easternmost locale.

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But more important by far than the number of facilities and range of time zones represented in our operations is the personnel component.

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The more than 20,000 people who give them life and substance.

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At Container Corporation, we never forget that things, even impressive things like mills, plants, laboratories, offices,

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and the modern technology that supports them, produce nothing by and of themselves.

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It is people, individuals like you and the rest of us all around the company,

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who bring meaning and value out of the things we're involved with.

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Naturally, each of our facilities from state to state and from country to country differs from all the others in particular details.

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But in each of them, there is one unifying characteristic.

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Containers approach to you, the individual employee, and your development.

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As a promote from within company, the management of each facility is committed to equal opportunity and the principle that all development is self-development.

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Within an informal supportive climate, management provides guidance and opportunities,

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which encourage the individual to take personal responsibility for his or her daily achievements and contributions,

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as well as for longer range career development.

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In addition to our policies of self-development, equal opportunity, and promotion from within, based on merit and the capacity to perform,

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Container acknowledges at every level of management adherence to the principles of evaluating constructively and regularly with each employee,

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his or her performance, and the potential for increased responsibility of compensating our employees equitably and competitively in relation to other companies,

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and of ensuring that they receive information that is important to them.

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This emphasis on the importance of the individual is the cornerstone of our organization.

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We're not a huge faceless corporation.

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In effect, we're a large association of small operations.

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And whatever you do and wherever you go in this company,

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you will be an individual participating in a team effort with other individuals who will come to know and depend on you,

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as you will come to know and depend on them for mutual achievement.

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And you are an important individual participant, an important person, whom we are most happy to welcome to our organization.

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You will find that our emphasis on the importance of the individual is more than an internal company concern.

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It's an attitude we have communicated widely through the pages of leading magazines for a quarter of a century with the Great Ideas campaign.

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In the Walter P. Pepke Memorial Park in Carroll Stream, Illinois,

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a selection of quotations from that campaign are attractively and enduringly displayed for all to share.

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Henry G. Vander Epp, chairman of the board of Container Corporation, comments on the continuing importance of these ideas.

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Like Walter Pepke, we in container management today firmly believe that the quotations permanently set in these walls are as appropriate now as when first expressed.

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This one, for example, from Thomas Carlyle, I think is particularly pertinent.

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The great law of culture is, let each become all that he was created capable of being.

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Expand, if possible, to his full growth and show himself at length in his own shape and stature. Be these what they may.

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Our adherence to the classical regard for individual choice and potential is not something that we simply talk about.

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It's an article of faith in our corporate philosophy, and you'll find through your association with Container Corporation that we practice it rigorously every working day.

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Thank you.