Sealed Air

THE COMPANY

The Company is a leading global manufacturer of a wide range of protective and specialty packaging materials and systems that are used to protect a wide variety of products from damage during manufacture, shipment, storage and handling. The Company's principal classes of products include engineered products, surface protection and other cushioning products, and food packaging products. Certain of these products are also produced for non-packaging applications. The Company's operations are conducted primarily in the United States and in 17 other countries in North America, Europe and the Far East, and its products are distributed in these areas as well as in other parts of the world.

Engineered Products. These products, which accounted for approximately 40% of 1993 net sales, include the Company's Instapak (Registered Trademark) polyurethane foam packaging systems, thick polyethylene foams for packaging and non-packaging uses, and Korrvu (Registered Trademark) suspension packaging products.

Instapak (Registered Trademark) systems consist of proprietary blends of polyurethane chemicals and specially designed dispensing equipment, certain features of which are patented. The Company also manufactures a line of Instamate (Registered Trademark) polyolefin films, which are high-performance films designed for use with Instapak (Registered Trademark) systems. These systems produce just-in-time polyurethane foam cushions for a broad range of protective packaging applications.

Thick polyethylene foams, offered in varying densities and thicknesses, are used in applications in which a clean, non-abrasive material is required with such properties as shock absorption, vibration dampening, thermal insulation or buoyancy. The Company is also engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of Korrvu (Registered Trademark) suspension packaging, which is covered by certain patents. A Korrvu (Registered Trademark) package suspends a product in the air space of its shipping container between two strong, flexible low-slip films.

Surface Protection and Other Cushioning Products. These products, which accounted for approximately 47% of 1993 net sales, include AirCap (Registered Trademark) R and PolyCap (Registered Trademark) R air cellular cushioning materials, Cell-Aire (Registered Trademark) polyethylene foam sheeting, various paper protective packaging materials, and a comprehensive line of protective and durable mailers. These mailers, marketed under the Jiffy (Trademark) and related trademarks, are used for mailing a wide variety of items for which clean, light-weight, preconstructed protective packages are desirable, and may provide the user with significant postage savings and enhanced product protection relative to other types of envelopes and shipping containers. The Company's Shurtuff (Registered Trademark) durable plastic mailers, which were acquired in 1993, are a line of mailers produced from coextruded polyolefin film. This class of products also includes various automated packaging systems including the Instasheeter (Trademark) converting system that is designed for use with the Company's surface protection and cushioning materials, the Jiffy Packer (Trademark) paper packaging system, and the VoidPak (Trademark) inflatable packaging system.

Food Packaging Products. These products, which accounted for approximately 11% of 1993 net sales, consist primarily of the Company's Dri-Loc (Registered Trademark) absorbent pads, which are covered by certain patents and are used in the pre-packaging of meat, fish and poultry to absorb excess fluids. With their superior absorbency, Dri-Loc (Registered Trademark) pads enable the supermarket retailer to save material, labor and packaging waste by reducing the number of packaging rewraps. Also included in this product class are conventional absorbent food pads, Pad-Loc (Trademark) poultry processor absorbent pads, and supermarket display case liners.

Other Products. Other products are primarily products designed to control static electricity and certain recreation and energy conservation products. Other products accounted for approximately 2% of 1993 net sales.

The Company employs several hundred sales and account representatives who market its products through a large number of distributors, fabricators and converters as well as directly to end users. In the United States and certain other countries, the Company has separate sales and marketing groups for its engineered products, its surface protection and other cushioning products, and its food packaging products. These groups often work together to develop market opportunities for the Company's products.

The Company has no material long-term contracts for the distribution of its protective packaging products. In 1993, no customer or affiliated group of customers accounted for as much as 5% of the Company's consolidated net sales.

To assist its marketing efforts and to provide specialized customer services, the Company maintains packaging laboratories in many of its United States and foreign facilities. These laboratories are staffed by professional packaging engineers and equipped with drop-testing and other equipment used to develop and test cost-effective package designs to meet the particular protective packaging requirements of each customer.

While the Company is the owner or licensee of a number of United States and foreign patents and patent applications that relate to certain of its products, manufacturing processes and equipment, the Company believes that its success depends primarily on its marketing, engineering and manufacturing skills and on its research and product technology.

The Company believes that its protective packaging materials offer superior packaging protection, enabling customers to achieve the same degree of product protection with smaller, lighter packages using the Company's protective packaging materials than with many alternative packaging methods, thereby reducing the disposal of damaged products as well as the amount of packaging waste. Because the Company offers both plastic-based and paper-based protective packaging materials, customers can select the protective packaging materials that they consider to best meet their performance and cost needs and environmental preferences. A number of the Company's product lines incorporate recycled or reprocessed content, and the Company maintains ongoing efforts to add or increase the amount of recycled or reprocessed content in many of its product lines.

The Company also supports its customers' interests in eliminating waste by offering or participating in collection programs for certain of the Company's products or product packaging and for materials used in certain of the Company's products, including