I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
Many different roads lead to the far -ranging facilities of Container Corporation of America.
And on any given morning, most of them represent a new and unfamiliar course to those who are new to the company.
To them, the road to Container Corporation is lined with a strangeness and uncertainty common to a new working environment.
This is the situation you have been experiencing lately.
And it is the purpose of this communication to achieve a better understanding of your relationship to us and ours to you.
You were here at Container because of a mutual choice.
We chose you because we learned enough about you to make a positive judgment on your capabilities, present and potential, to contribute to the overall performance of an established high -performance team.
You chose us for what we must assume were equally good and practical reasons.
At this point, we probably know more about you than you know about us.
Now it's your turn to get a sharper, more complete understanding of who your fellow team members are and what all of us, including you, are doing at Container Corporation of America.
By now, you are generally aware of the fact that we are in the packaging business.
You may even know that we are the world's largest producer of paperboard packaging and that we are also a principal manufacturer of plastics packaging.
But there are some larger dimensions that you should know about.
Let's start with some basics.
First of all, we are a leadership organization.
We are leaders in an important industry, which our first corporate generation did much to establish.
Secondly, we are a creative organization.
We apply our creative resources to problems that concern not only many basic industries, but the broad general public served by these industries.
Thirdly, and in many ways more importantly, we are a respected organization.
We are respected not just by our industry peers and by a wide range of customers we serve, but by important segments of the society who have high and continuing regard for the contributions we make to the larger interests that work for the common good.
Strictly speaking, our name says what we do.
One would expect Container Corporation to make containers, and we do make many millions of them annually in great variety.
But neither you nor anybody else could just come in off the street and buy a hundred containers or 10 ,000.
The reason is simple.
We don't stock containers.
Ours is a custom business, and the millions of containers we make are made to order.
Very often, in fact, the containers provided represent only one element of the total solution to the distribution and marketing problems affecting the project involved.
Consequently, the containers you have been casually aware of all your life, in your neighborhood drug store, department store, and supermarket, are largely taken for granted by the consuming public.
This is a good thing, really, because the package has to be an extension of the product it contains and has to function in the interests of that product if it is to fulfill its multiple responsibilities in production, distribution, and consumer environments.
This brings up the achievement of which we are proudest.
Container Corporation's leading role in making packaging the crucial link between the producer and the consumer.
The importance of this link is difficult to exaggerate.
In our first half century of corporate life, our nation has become increasingly urbanized.
Consequently, as population has expanded, it has moved farther from the sites of production, even as its demands for the fruits of production have continued to grow.
This has placed an ever -increasing burden on the distribution and marketing process essential to both sides, producers and consumers.
It also presented a great opportunity and a great challenge to the packaging industry.
It has always been the goal of Container Corporation to support the marketing and distribution success of organizations of all sizes and specializations.
By helping them succeed, we directly support the free enterprise system that supports us all.
How we rose to this combination of opportunity and challenge is a much longer story than we can document in detail here.
But we can sketch in some highlights.
And a good place to begin is with the marvelous material which is the primary basis of our packaging success.
Paperboard.
Ask us to define paperboard and we would say that paperboard is paper with muscle, incorporating all of the built -in communication capacities of paper.
So long and so well regarded for these properties, with the addition of strength and resistance qualities required for versatile, practical, economical product packaging.
Paperboard is also light in weight, variable in structure, and is limitless in innovative application, as creative imagination is limitless.
It is appropriate to note that the earlier packaging material which paperboard replaced was wood, produced by mature trees like other lumber products.
Natural grades of paperboard also come from trees, but from much younger trees, grown in a few years, harvested and continually replenished by new growth, much in the manner of agricultural crops.
The paperboard is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, and is made of wood, which are first mixed in a 98 % water solution and then reformed during a very fast trip through the papermaking machine into an entirely different solid state, paperboard, embodying a vast new range of capabilities.
Paper and paperboard share an additional all -important advantage, especially valuable in these times of critical material shortages.
After almost any of many uses, paper and paperboard can be recycled, reduced again to their fibrous elements, remixed with water, and reformed into another generation of quality packaging material, further conserving and extending the usefulness of natural growth.
So the solid to liquid to solid cycle goes on and on, with solid gains for all sides in the process.
We can speak about this recycling process with conviction, because it has been a basic part of our paperboard manufacture since Container Corporation was established in 1926.
Later developments and refinements have brought us to our present position as the nation's leading recycler of waste paper.
But our moves to meet ecological concerns go far beyond recycling, to application of the fullest measure of available technological resources to support air and water preservation in our mill and fabrication plant locations.
Response to challenge has always been a hallmark of our company.
The motivating vision of our founder and first chief executive officer, Walter P.
Pepke, was that paperboard packaging could and would successfully challenge wood for dominance in the packaging field.
And ultimately, paperboard did prove to be a far better packaging material than wood could ever be.
But before more than a small start could be made on that course, the Great Depression was in full swing and companies were failing on all sides.
Fortunately, Pepke's bright young management team brought their organization safely through those darkest of times and continued with expansionist moves that strengthened the corporation to fully meet the biggest challenge of all, the tremendous demands World War II would make on packaging.
Looking back now, the ease with which the post -war growth was accomplished seems natural enough.
The challenging experiences of their first 20 years gave Container Corporation management a lot of maturity and confidence to build upon.
Before the decade of the 40s was complete, Container Corporation was not only a nationwide organization, but had expanded to international stature with facilities in Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico.
The rest, as they say, is history.
And very upbeat history it is, too.
By the end of our first half century, annual sales were near the $1 billion mark.
But more important to you than our very successful first 50 years is the evidence of continuing growth potential, which will provide expanding career opportunities in all areas.
Let's look at these opportunities from the viewpoint of the whole organization and from the viewpoint of the individual.
First, the organization.
Today, Container Corporation is the world's largest producer of paperboard packaging, including folding cartons, shipping containers, composite cans, and fiber drums.
In addition, we are a leading producer of industrial plastic drums, a type of packaging unmatched for the handling and transport of chemicals and related products.
Currently, Container Corporation operates nearly 150 major facilities, 90 plus in the United States and the rest in Latin America and Western Europe.
And on the geographic scale, it is interesting to note that as the sun sets on our properties in California, Oregon, and Washington, it has already risen for another day over Anzio, Italy, our easternmost locale.
But more important by far than the number of facilities and range of time zones represented in our operations is the personnel component.
The more than 20 ,000 people who give them life and substance.
At Container Corporation, we never forget that things, even impressive things like mills, plants, laboratories, offices, and the modern technology that supports them, produce nothing by and of themselves.
It is people, individuals like you and the rest of us all around the company, who bring meaning and value out of the things we're involved with.
Naturally, each of our facilities from state to state and from country to country differs from all the others in particular details.
But in each of them, there is one unifying characteristic.
Containers approach to you, the individual employee, and your development.
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.
Within an informal supportive climate, management provides guidance and opportunities, which encourage the individual to take personal responsibility for his or her daily achievements and contributions, as well as for longer range career development.
In addition to our policies of self -development, equal opportunity, and promotion from within, based on merit and the capacity to perform, Container acknowledges at every level of management adherence to the principles of evaluating constructively and regularly with each employee, his or her performance, and the potential for increased responsibility of compensating our employees equitably and competitively in relation to other companies, and of ensuring that they receive information that is important to them.
This emphasis on the importance of the individual is the cornerstone of our organization.
We're not a huge faceless corporation.
In effect, we're a large association of small operations.
And whatever you do and wherever you go in this company, you will be an individual participating in a team effort with other individuals who will come to know and depend on you, as you will come to know and depend on them for mutual achievement.
And you are an important individual participant, an important person, whom we are most happy to welcome to our organization.
You will find that our emphasis on the importance of the individual is more than an internal company concern.
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.
In the Walter P.
Pepke Memorial Park in Carroll Stream, Illinois, a selection of quotations from that campaign are attractively and enduringly displayed for all to share.
Henry G.
Vander Epp, chairman of the board of Container Corporation, comments on the continuing importance of these ideas.
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.
This one, for example, from Thomas Carlyle, I think is particularly pertinent.
The great law of culture is, let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Expand, if possible, to his full growth and show himself at length in his own shape and stature.
Be these what they may.
Our adherence to the classical regard for individual choice and potential is not something that we simply talk about.
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.
Thank you.
