March 16, 1999 Five Independent Steel Drum Corporations Form New Joint Venture Five independent and geographically diverse new steel drum manufacturers have joined together to form "CONTAINERS AMERICA, LLC". The CEO's of each Company, Doug Brooks, CP Louisiana, Inc. (New Orleans, LA), Robert Bradford, General Steel Drum Corporation (Charlotte, NC), Dale Cann, Nesco Container Corporation (Fenton, MO), Earnest Beardsley, North Coast Container Corporation (Cleveland, OH) and Lester Trilla, Trilla Steel Drum Corporation (Chicago, IL), made a unified statement announcing the new venture.  "Containers America, LLC" will allow our Companies to become more competitive, not only in our raw material purchases, but in the future, being able to offer drums to a multi-plant domestic drum user who wants to deal with only one "entity".  A trend towards "single source supply" has become popular in recent years leading to a limitation of available drum manufacturers capable of handling many of these requirements.  "When we enter this arena, we expect to be a major source for many future bids of this nature", the group stated - "Our Companies are located in areas where we have minimal competitive contact with each other.  This new joint venture now positions our Companies to become capable of competitively supplying drums almost anywhere in the USA". Further refinements to this new joint venture are still being made with anticipated future savings for our customers and the five companies involved expected. ###   Copyright © 2000 Containers America, LLC.  All rights reserved. Last Modified Tuesday, January 07, 2003