Sebright Products held an open house at their Shelbyville manufacturing site on September 19th and 20th to celebrate their 40th year in business. I had the pleasure of joining the festivities at this well-attended event. I first caught up with Dave Kaminski, Business Development Manager for Sebright Products, and Western Michigan Paper Science alumni, to help me understand how this event came together. Dave says, "For the same amount of investment to go to a trade show with all our products and staffing, plus the booth space, we thought we could have our own trade show for all our customers to come see our plant, full compliment of products, and meet our people to celebrate our company's 40th year in business." Judging by the attendance at the open house, this was a good plan.
Dave then took me through their whole product portfolio of solutions for the paper industry. "We actually started out in the paper industry before broadening to other industries. Our first extruder solutions were for what was then Rock Tenn in Battle Creek, MI." Since then, they have delivered solutions to most of the paper companies in North America and 30% of their business is now global. "It's very costly and inefficient to move wet, bulky solid waste around to landfills that is mostly water. We can reduce both weight and volume substantially yielding a typical ROI of less than 12 months for our customers." The quality and reliability of Sebright's solutions is apparent when you look at the growth they have achieved over the last decade. Paper manufacturers who choose cheaper equipment from low cost countries like China quickly realize the importance of having spare parts and a full service team ready to respond to wear and tear these heavy-duty systems see while operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for at least 50 weeks a year.
After a filling my belly with amazing food from all the food truck vendors, swinging a golf club in the simulator, and attending various product demonstrations, I had a chance to sit down with Brent and Dave Sebright, the former being the original founder of the company, to see how it all started. Brent said, "I was already installing rental compactors for a company called Brask. That turned into rebuilding of used compactors for Brask. Ultimately, Brask wanted me and business partner Lee Murray to build new compactors because their incumbent fabricator was cutting too many corners. That's how it all started." After lining up some financing for seed money, they incorporated the new company in 1984, Dave joined the company full time after retiring from the military, and they were off and running. "We didn't know it at the time, but we were getting into the business at the onset of the whole recycling movement."
With all of their previous experience installing and repairing compactors, Brent knew all the typical failure points and high wear parts of the machines. With that knowledge, they were able to improve so many design features to eliminate those problems, or at least, quickly get to the internal guts for maintenance and performance adjustments. They would never compromise on quality to chase cost savings. With that ethos, most of Sebright's early machine installs are still in operation today. Another outcome from the dedication to producing the best equipment, customers would ask Sebright to build them other solutions which led Sebright Products into so many other categories beyond compacting, like extrusion, belt presses, balers, and so fourth.
Sebright Products is the quintessential family business that values trust, quality, and commitments. They do not believe in "planned obsolescence" or milking service dollars out of under-performing equipment. This was apparent to me as I paraded through the rest of the product line demonstrations and chatted with many of the company personnel. I asked Brent if he ever envisioned in those early days where they would be today as a company, "Never...we were too busy just trying to survive and get to the next order in the early years." Well, I must say, Sebright Products has done very well for themselves, their customers, and their employees. As the founders advance in age, they are putting succession planning in place to keep the company together and remain a top-quality manufacturer for many decades to come. Congratulations on all your success!
To learn more about Sebright Products, visit them on the web at www.sebrightproducts.com.
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