Sonoco names Ernest Haynes CEO as Howard Coker retires

Sonoco announced Monday morning that Ernest Haynes will take over as president and CEO on Dec. 31, when Howard Coker retires. Haynes’s annual base salary will be $1.1 million, with a bonus target equal to 120% of base salary. Coker has worked at Sonoco for 41 years and served as CEO since 2020.

“It has been the honor of my career to serve as CEO of Sonoco, a company I have known all my life,” Coker said in a statement Monday. “Now is the right time to hand leadership to the next generation as part of our orderly succession planning process.”

Ernest Haynes currently serves as president of global consumer packaging. He will add CEO responsibilities when Coker departs. Sonoco appointed Haynes in August amid a restructuring that merged two geographical divisions for consumer packaging: the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Haynes has worked at Sonoco since 1997 and rose rapidly through its ranks during the past year. Before his August appointment, Haynes led the Americas consumer packaging segment. That role was announced in November 2025, and he spent less than a year in it.

In a February interview with Packaging Dive, Haynes said Sonoco’s yearslong structural transformation was largely finished. He said the simpler organizational structure would unlock value for both Sonoco and its customers.

What changed at Sonoco before the handover?

Sonoco has undergone a string of M&A, restructurings and other leadership shuffles. In February 2024, the company launched business-unit changes that created four core businesses:

• Metal packaging
• Rigid paper containers
• Industrial packaging
• Combined flexibles and thermoforming

Later in 2024, Sonoco acquired European metal packaging company Eviosys.

Sonoco’s most recent quarterly securities filing said the company had not achieved the purchasing synergies previously expected from the Eviosys acquisition. Sonoco cited geopolitical and economic conditions, including tariffs, along with inflation. Those conditions, especially in Europe, prompted the company to lower projections for several financial reporting categories, including sales volumes.

In 2025, Sonoco divested its flex-therm and temperature-assured packaging businesses. The company also recorded various leadership departures last year. At a February 2026 investor day, Coker declared the portfolio transformation complete and said its hardest stage lay behind Sonoco.

John Haley, chairman of the board, said: “As CEO, Howard has led Sonoco through a defining period of transformation. He reshaped Sonoco into a more focused company built around scaled, market-leading Consumer and Industrial packaging businesses with a strong balance sheet.”

What are Haynes’s pay and retention terms?

Sonoco’s Monday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission listed Haynes’s annual base salary at $1.1 million and his annual bonus target at 120% of base salary.

A separate filing earlier this year put Coker’s base salary at more than $1.2 million at the end of 2025, unchanged from the prior year. That base exceeded Haynes’s $1.1 million salary.

The Monday filing also said Sonoco’s board approved a stock-based retention package for CFO Paul Joachimczyk. The stock vests in two years if Joachimczyk remains with the company. He joined Sonoco as CFO in June 2025, following former CFO Rob Dillard’s departure amid a leadership shakeup.

What will leadership discuss next?

Sonoco’s news release indicated that leaders may discuss the transition Tuesday at the Baird Global Industrial Conference. Under Haynes, Sonoco must turn its simpler organization into the Eviosys purchasing synergies it previously expected.