The Atlantic Foundry Company was an Akron, Ohio-based iron casting manufacturer that operated from 1905 to 1989. The company was founded by Charles Reymann Sr., a immigrant from Alsace-Lorraine, along with 4 fellow foundryman, Ewald Erickson, Emil Krill, Fred Spalding, and Phillip Willenbacker, who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean when they migrated to America and named their new business The Atlantic Foundry. To meet the growing demand for iron, in 1910 they built a modern iron foundry at 182 Beaver Street and in 1919 they added a huge steel foundry at the same site and began a steel casting business. By this time Erickson and Krill had sold their interest to Reymann and he eventually became the President of the company, and the company was privately owned and operated by the Reymann family until its closing.
Akron is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Cleveland. As of the 2017 Census estimate, the city proper had a total population of 197,846, making it the 119th-largest city in the United States. The Greater Akron area, covering Summit and Portage counties, had an estimated population of 703,505.
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Its abundance in rocky planets like Earth is due to its abundant production by fusion in high-mass stars, where it is the last element to be produced with release of energy before the violent collapse of a supernova, which scatters the iron into space.
Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting materials are usually metals or various cold setting materials that cure after mixing two or more components together; examples are epoxy, concrete, plaster and clay. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods.
At its peak, the company employed 450 people, including its
It operated its own credit union. The company also created a division called Akron Mattress Co., which was later sold in the late 1960s to a private concern that became Schubert Industries Inc.
Atlantic Foundry closed on January 13, 1989. Thomas Reymann, the company's final president, said the manufacturing plant had not been profitable during its final six years. The Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC), a non-profit program affiliated with Kent State University, [1] attempted to work with the foundry's employees to purchase the company from the Reymann family under the terms of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). However, a lawsuit brought by 125 foundry retirees seeking the resumption of health and life insurance benefits derailed the ESOP negotiations.
The Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC) is an organization based at Kent State University which provides employees of businesses in Ohio with resources for establishing Employee Share Ownership Plans through worker buyouts of companies.
Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in Ashtabula, Burton, East Liverpool, Jackson Township, New Philadelphia, Salem, and Warren, Ohio, with additional facilities in Cleveland, Independence, and Twinsburg, Ohio, New York City, and Florence, Italy.
An employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is an employee-owner program that provides a company's workforce with an ownership interest in the company. In an ESOP, companies provide their employees with stock ownership, often at upfront cost to the employees. ESOP shares, however, are part of employees' remuneration for work performed. Shares are allocated to employees and may be held in an ESOP trust until the employee retires or leaves the company. The shares are then either bought back by the company for redistribution or voided.
