Sonoco delivered on its key performance initiatives in 2005....

Sonoco delivered on its key performance initiatives in 2005. The Company experienced sustained quarterly earnings increases, margin improvement and double-digit sales growth driven by acquisitions, improved company wide volume coming from significant new consumer product and market development, and geographical expansion. Our employees remained focused on meeting the needs of our customers while improving productivity and managing costs in all of our businesses. We continued our efforts to successfully hedge the majority of our natural gas needs to provide more certainty of energy costs, and we maintained a positive price/cost relationship, despite rising costs in most raw materials.