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In 1957, American engineer Alfred W. Fielding and Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes sought to invent plastic wallpaper with a paper backing. While the wallpaper failed, Fielding and Chavannes realized that their invention could be a packing material. Sealed Air was founded in 1960 based on this invention of Bubble Wrap. The same year, Sealed Air raised $85,000 (equivalent to $930,000 in 2025) in its initial public offering. Fielding was executive vice president and a director of Sealed Air until his retirement in 1987, while Chavannes worked mostly as a consultant.
Shortly after a 1998 business restructuring of the global conglomerate W.R. Grace Company-Conn, the original Sealed Air was merged into Grace subsidiary W. R. Grace & Co. NY, and the surviving company was named W. R. Grace & Co. Soon this W.R. Grace & Co renamed itself Sealed Air, the name of the current entity, but now a vastly larger corporation due to the Grace components. Years later, in 2002, this Sealed Air Corporation was required to pay to W. R. Grace Company-Conn $728 million to settle bankruptcy and fraud allegations brought against the original merger. T.J. Dermot Dunphy was CEO from 1971 to 2000. An Oxford University graduate who received his MBA from Harvard Business School, he became chairman of Kildare Enterprises, LLC in November 2000 after leaving Sealed Air. During his tenure at Sealed Air, sales grew from $5 million to $3 billion.
William Hickey was CEO from 2000 to March 2013. He previously worked in several capacities at Sealed Air, including COO, executive vice president, CFO, vice president, and general manager of the Food Packaging Division and the Cellu Products Division. Before working for Sealed Air, he was CPA at Arthur Young and CFO of W. R. Grace and Company's Latin American operations.
After the Station nightclub fire in 2003, victims' lawyers suggested that Sealed Air had produced some of the foam that was ignited in the fire. Sealed Air paid $25 million to victims in civil settlements, but did not admit wrongdoing.
In March 2013, Jérôme Péribère took over as CEO and president of Sealed Air. He obtained his business economics and finance degree from Sciences Po in Paris, France. He previously was president and COO of Sealed Air before taking over as CEO, and prior to joining Sealed Air, he worked in several managerial roles with the Dow Chemical Company from 1977 to 2012.
On July 23, 2014, Sealed Air announced that it would be moving its global headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. In January 2018, Ted Doheny took over as CEO.
In May 2023, the corporation announced that it would adopt the corporate brand SEE, while retaining the legal name of Sealed Air Corporation.
In October 2023, Ted Doheny stepped down as CEO. Emile Chammas, Chief Operating Officer and Dustin Semach, Chief Financial Officer were interim co-Presidents and co-CEOs.
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In November 2025, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice agreed to acquire the company for a total enterprise value of $10.3 billion. The acquisition was completed on April 9, 2026 with Sealed Air becoming a privately held company and its shares ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sealed Air, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7