CEO Risch says operations will continue without any changes
Gibbs Die Casting Corp., one of the top manufacturers in Henderson for decades, has been acquired by a California private equity firm. Gibbs’ employees were informed Monday morning.
The possibility that changes will be made to the way the company runs, though, was shut down by CEO Greg Risch in a Tuesday afternoon interview with the Hendersonian. Risch said the circumstances surrounding the purchase that occurred between parent company Koch Enterprises Inc. of Evansville and Architect Equity of El Segundo, Calif., are as good as could be hoped for.
“(Architect) want to do what I want to do,” he said and added that Gibbs’ top management team “stays in place.”
“They want to grow this long-term,” he said. “Henderson is the base and will forever be the base.”
Also good news for the roughly 790 employees—“team members” they are called at the company—is that there will be no job cuts that come from this changeover in ownership, Risch said. He said operations will continue to go as they have been, and the only change will be that Risch will answer to a new board of directors.
Risch was noticeably excited in the phone interview.
“I get to keep doing what I love doing for the team I love,” said Risch, who has served as Gibbs’ CEO the past five years.
In his five years leading Gibbs, he worked under Koch, an organization which has the best people he’s ever worked for, he said.
“They’ve met every promise and it’s been a great run,” he said.
The terms of the deal between Koch, which has a 151-year history, and Architect, which was founded in 2018, would not be disclosed, Risch said.
Also a part of Gibbs’ continued operations includes the vital role that the company plays in the community, Risch said. The company works closely with Henderson Community College’s FAME, a work-and-learn program that allows students to go to classes two days a week and work three days a week at a local manufacturing partner, one of which is Gibbs.
Gibbs is also involved in Henderson County High School’s Career and Technical Education Unit, Risch said. And Gibbs supports the United Way of Henderson County and the Tri-State Women’s Network, Risch said.
“None of that will change,” he said.
According to a news release from Architect, the firm hopes to grow Gibbs.
“We are excited about building upon the existing core business as well as identifying opportunities for growth that require high quality engineering expertise and aluminum manufacturing capability,” said Dionisio Lucchesi, a Managing Partner of Architect Equity, in a prepared statement
According to information that had been posted on the Koch Enterprises website, “Automotive News” lists Gibbs Die Casting as one of the 100 top OEM (original equipment manufacturing) suppliers to North America. Gibbs today operates four factories making custom aluminum and magnesium castings, machining, and assembly and die building.
Its primary focus is manufacturing precision diecast, machined and assembled products for the automotive industry, such as driveline, powertrain and transmission parts, though the company says it is involved in other markets as well.
Risch said setting growth goals is dependent on numerous factors and could include existing equipment, floor space and building new operation centers or acquiring existing structures.
“We want to look at all that,” Risch said, but added growth should be done in a smart manner.
According to the Architect news release, the private equity firm will retain Gibbs’ existing leadership team which includes Risch, Jeff Moyer as chief commercial officer, Harvey Dewan as chief operating officer, and John Bush who has been promoted to chief financial officer.
The acquisition of Gibbs marks the seventh platform acquisition by Architect, a company which was started in 2018 that focuses on “acquiring, managing, and improving businesses in the lower middle market,” according to information supplied on the news release. “The firm pursues companies that exhibit the opportunity for improvement and growth and can benefit from Architect’s capital base, industry relationships and operational resources.”
Gibbs has been successful and a Henderson fixture since the 1960s
Historical perspective by Chuck Stinnett
Gibbs was founded in 1965 as Gibbs Die Casting Aluminum Corp. by Henderson industrialist Robert K. “Bob” Gibbs and his 26-year-old son Nick Gibbs.
They opened operations in an industrial park on U.S. 60-West on the outskirts of Henderson with the help of $300,000 in industrial revenue bonds issued by the city of Henderson. Bob Gibbs served as CEO of the company and Nick as president.
The company evidently was a quick success. By September 1967, Gibbs was operating two plants in Henderson producing aluminum die castings for industries and the military. Needing experienced supervisors, it was advertising in the Detroit Free Press and other northern newspapers for five aluminum die cast foremen “who are worth $10,000 or more per year” — the equivalent of more than $93,000 today.
The Gibbs sold their company for $1 million in 1969 to family-owned George Koch Sons (now Koch Enterprises Inc.) of Evansville. While Koch, now 152 years old, is a diversified corporation that today reports annual sales of nearly $1.5 billion, the acquisition of Gibbs was “the biggest risk ever taken” by Koch at the time, according to its website.
A risk it didn’t take was replacing the founders; Bob Gibbs remained with Gibbs Die Casting as board chairman while Nick Gibbs continued as president.
By 1971, Gibbs Die Casting was the sixth-largest defense contractor in Kentucky, paid nearly $2.5 million to manufacture steel balls for cluster bombs, according to a 1973 article in Southern Exposure magazine.
For years during the 1970s, the company advertised for workers. A typical ad in 1975 in The Evansville Press declared, “Our business is very healthy and growing with better than average pay and benefits. Excellent, friendly working conditions. Hot meal served every shift. All you can eat 50¢” — a price that remained steady for years despite high inflation rates during that decade.
Father and son Gibbs built the company into one of the largest die casting firms in the United States, at times employing upwards of 1,000 people in Henderson between full-time employees and temporary workers. The company today employs some 800, according to the Koch website.
When Bob Gibbs died in August 1983, he was remembered as being generous with employees in terms of paying competitive salaries and bestowing gifts on them. “My employees have always shown through their work that they appreciate what I try to do for them,” he said in a 1978 interview.
The company shortened its name to Gibbs Die Casting Corp. in 1993 as it began focusing on producing magnesium as well as aluminum die-cast products.
As then-head of the company, Nick Gibbs took Gibbs global, expanding into Texas, South Korea, Brazil, Hungary and China.
Nick Gibbs became known as an expert in die casting, sometimes personally operating a casting press to solve a problem or to determine how to run challenging product designs.
“As a result, Gibbs became a company known for its technical innovation,” according to his obituary in September 2007. “Always pushing the limits of technology, Nick led Gibbs Die Casting in becoming the ‘go-to’ company for customers looking for someone to produce new product designs or to utilize out-of-the-ordinary aluminum alloys.”
Nick Gibbs oversaw the daily operations of the company until his retirement in 2005. He was followed in that role by Ken Sparks, then Steve Church. Henderson auto industry veteran Greg Risch became the fourth president and CEO of Gibbs in March 2020.
According to information that had been posted on the Koch Enterprises website, “Automotive News” lists Gibbs Die Casting as one of the 100 top OEM (original equipment manufacturing) suppliers to North America. Gibbs today operates four factories making custom aluminum and magnesium castings, machining, and assembly and die building.
Its primary focus is manufacturing precision diecast, machined and assembled products for the automotive industry, such as driveline, powertrain and transmission parts, though the company says it is involved in other markets as well.
According to a profile of the company at the website of the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership, Gibbs has 27 casting presses, more than 100 CNC (computer numerical control) machines and more than 100 working robots at its Henderson plants.
Koch Enterprises also owns Henderson-based Audubon Metals, which produces aluminum alloy and other products from shredded automobiles at its plant near the Gibbs complex on Ohio Drive. It has been a supplier of recycled aluminum to Gibbs.
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Before founding Gibbs Die Casting, Bob Gibbs was a serial entrepreneur and for years Henderson’s leading industrialist.
The Henderson Morning Gleaner on Feb. 1, 1942, announced that Gibbs, a native of Chicago, would build Henderson’s first injection molded plastics plant at the corner of Fourth and North Adams streets. “Mr. Gibbs has had considerable experience although the injection method is relatively new in this country,” the newspaper reported.
“This new plant will probably go first into production making control knobs and panels for aircraft, the greatest war urgency being for aircraft needs,” it said.
He initially intended to open it in Evansville and visited the chamber of commerce for help in finding a location. “I waited for an hour,” Gibbs was quoted as saying in a Gleaner story published in 1981, “and then I decided to try Henderson” where local leaders promptly took him around town looking at sites.
His Tri-State Plastic Molding Co. at 505 Fourth St. in Henderson opened as a single cinder-block room housing five employees, according to a Francele Armstrong column in The Gleaner on Jan. 3, 1953. It expanded into die-casting aluminum and sometimes zinc products, and the Fourth Street plant was expanded seven times in eight years as the workforce grew to 250 working three shifts. It ran out of room by 1953, prompting an additional plant on South Main Street.
Tri-State Plastic became nationally known for producing plastic toys, including the Block City and Main Street lines of Lego-like interlocking building blocks, as well as household and other items. Gibbs sold Tri-State Plastic to his partner in 1955.
in 1956 he founded Gibbs Automatic Moulding Co., later known as Gamco Products Co., which produced plastic moldings and manufactured and plated zinc and aluminum die castings at a plant on outer Fifth Street.
He sold the company in 1965 to Michigan-based Masco Corp., which also owned the Delta and Peerless faucet companies. In the late 1970s, Gamco manufactured 75% of the disposable drink cups used on U.S. airlines; by 2000, Gamco produced virtually all the castings for Delta and Peerless faucets and employed 400 people here.
Gamco was acquired in 2006 by Taiwan-based Sunspring America Inc. and began operating under that name. However, in the face of a weak housing market during the Great Recession, Sunspring in late 2008 announced it would lay off two-thirds of its workforce—about 130 people. The Sunspring plant on Fifth Street is no longer used for manufacturing.
