R.W. “Dick” Somerville was an Amercian busnessman and a leader in the field of plastics packaging. Somerville was DuPont’s worldwide leader in business and market development for flexible films and polymers for the packaging industry that has resulted in businesses that now exceed $800 million in sales annually.

Upon graduating from Sienna College (1960) and the Wharton school of Busniess (1962) Somerville joined DuPont to become one of its preeminent sales, marketing, and technical development managers in its Packaging Products Division.

Somerville made contributions to most segments of the DuPont packaging business, including cellophane, polyester films, shrink films, Bivac the world’s first vacuum skin packaging system for meat, microfoam, and the packaging resins businesses.

Somerville's greatest accomplishments occurred in the 1980s and 1990s years when he built DuPont’s International Packaging Business and organizations from the ground up. Starting with a small international sales group in the late 1980’s, Somerville went on a worldwide mission of teaching the basics of flexible, plastic packaging; sharing in the latest methods, plastic materials, and technologies, and demonstrating how this information could create value and business opportunity in local countries. Taking this approach, the organizations that Somerville both created and managed worked closely with local representatives in helping them develop the infrastructure to improve the in-country packaging, distribution, and delivery of food.

Part of Somerville's contributions included numerous seminars and customer training sessions that were jointly sponsored by Somerville’s organizations with local governments, industry leaders and trade and technical organizations. In the last decade, these teams have trained approximately 4000 technical and marketing professionals that now form the backbone of packaging industry worldwide.

Since 1984, Somerville was a dedicated member of TAPPI’s Polymers, Laminations and Coatings (PLC) Division, and was instrumental in sponsoring DuPont’s participation at annual Polymer’s, Laminations and Coatings technical conferences and meetings. He helped found the International Group of the PLC and its mission of providing international training and development for both the plastics converting and packaging industries globally.

In the 1970s he managed DuPont Packaging’s Chestnut Run Technical Service and Customer Lab Facility. Under his leadership the organization became recognized as a premier supplier of technical service, development and customer solutions to the worldwide flexible packaging industry.