By Janet Weyandt
Two tenets have remained constant throughout the 150 years GLC Minerals has been in business: the necessity of change and the importance of Green Bay and Great Lakes shipping.
The company, a custom manufacturer of calcium carbonate, calcium magnesium carbonate and calcium sulfate products used for animal nutrition, industrial applications, pollution filters and soil amendments, began in 1871 as the Hurlbut Calcium and Chemical Co. It was just after the Civil War, and the founder saw the potential for business success thanks to the city’s strategic location.
Through five generations, the Hurlbut family has remained dedicated to moving the business forward. Wesley Garner, owner and CEO and great-great-grandson of the founder, believes in constant change.
“What history has shown us is that longevity isn’t worth much in terms of staying the same,” Garner says. “What longevity has taught us is we need to change. We have to be entrepreneurial and take those risks. We have to be getting into new business — that’s the secret of longevity. About every 30 years, the business seems to change completely. Some of those changes were planned and some were not planned — sometimes the industry just changed.”
GLC Minerals has long specialized in producing additives and selling them in bulk to customers, who were responsible for figuring out the best way to use those additives for their own needs.
“Typically, we would sell product to the feed manufacturers and they would do the blending based on (their own) formulations,” Garner says.
In contrast to that, the new direction is all about custom applications for customers’ unique needs.
“Where we’re going with the company is really proprietary products instead of selling basic minerals,” Garner says. “We have the ability to essentially engineer a product based on these different chemicals for specific applications. It’s custom. We need to be an applications expert. We weren’t before. It was ‘if you need calcium, come get it from us.’”
This is a major new direction for the company, Garner says. It requires increased investment in new areas and forges a closer connection between GLC Minerals and its customers.
“For us, it’s a huge transition in R&D, investment, recruiting technical expertise, building up a marketing presence,” he says. “We have limited experience in selling direct to dairy. All of those things are a huge organizational transition.”
Most of GLC Minerals’ business — 40 to 50 percent — is animal nutrition, primarily dairy. Industrial applications include glass manufacturing, plastics, adhesives and coatings. It also manufactures chemicals with uses in agronomy, such as products that change the pH in the soil for farmers to increase production and care for their land.
Located along the Fox River, GLC Minerals is in a prime location to receive and ship products. From the river, ships can enter the bay of Green Bay and the entire Great Lakes basin.
Most of the company’s customers are located in the upper Midwest, Garner says, and that’s largely because small to medium operations are the best fit for GLC Minerals.
“Dairies are big small businesses,” he says. “They’re big businesses, but family owned. Our long-term history fits with theirs. We sell best to companies that are privately held, under $200 million (in sales). That’s not to say we can’t sell to big companies — we do — but our ideal customer is small to midsize.”
As the company begins to focus on the new direction of proprietary products, its leadership structure is designed to take the business — and its best and brightest — into the future with continued success.
“I think 70 percent of our leadership team is women, (including) the head of sales, the CFO and the COO,” Garner says. “For me that’s important in terms of hiring the best talent and also setting the stage for the next generation. I have two daughters and two sons. I have no idea who’s going to get involved in the business, but I do know all of them will have an equal opportunity in leadership. The team we have created today is setting the stage for that.”
glcminerals.com
