By: Stephen McCollum

In a nondescript one-story structure tucked into the far east side of Hartford City, you can stand at the epicenter of the global economy. 

Hartford City Foam and its CEO, Rusty Mitchell, are a microcosm of how integrated and interdependent the flow of goods and capital are, stretching from Asia to Blackford County, and how creative and enterprising a savvy business leader must be to keep it all running.

Although technically you don’t need to know this to appreciate Mitchell and Hartford City Foam’s role in the local economy, by the end you will agree that there is no irony in the fact that, in addition to his background in engineering design, Mitchell is a former EMT-A with life support training. 

As the adage goes, “there but for fortune…,” if Mitchell hadn’t had a job pulled out from under him earlier in his career, he might not have come in 1997 with his wife and family to “this amazingly quiet and safe small town.” 

Mitchell was almost two decades into a career with Marathon Oil’s packaging operations when the global giant elected to outsource the entire division. He was offered a job drawing piping systems at a refinery or a severance package. His entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, he took the severance and started consulting with a variety of companies in the packaging industry.

When Mitchell arrived, the operation was still part of the giant Mead Paper conglomerate’s distribution system, Zellerbach. Less than a year in, Mead sold it to International Paper Company, which folded it into its distribution system, xpedx. 

The year 2001 was tumultuous and traumatic for the nation, but here at home Mitchell was caught in a business whirlpool when International Paper announced it would close the Hartford City facility because it was getting out of the converting business. Converting is the production of sophisticated packaging materials for use in the distribution of products.

That’s when Mitchell’s life support training must have kicked in, because rather than let this viable business die he and his wife and a partner bought it and Hartford City Foam was born.

“Since we bought the business in 2001,” Mitchell reports, “we have experienced 400 percent growth.” Mitchell and his wife, Brenda, who serves as Business Manager, became sole owners in 2011.

Those numbers trace an upward trajectory, but the reality of doing business on the global stage is more like navigating a ship through the rising and falling swells on the open sea. 

“Packaging is becoming more and more challenging because companies we service are constantly changing policies, not to mention product models and designs, which means we have to make quick turnaround adjustments in the packaging we make for them,” he says.

Paramount to Hartford City Foam’s survival and success is the skilled workforce of 22 full-time and two part-time employees, who enjoy the company’s profit-sharing plan and operate a spectrum of high-tech precision equipment—slitters, die-cutters, saws, rewinders, welders, foam-fusion molders, and sheeters—that generates custom products for more than 300 customers, including major corporate brands like LexMark, Cummins Engine, Ford, Chrysler, Sony, Rolls Royce, Northrup Grummond, Eli Lilly, and Dean Foods. 

“Six of our employees were here when I arrived and they are the core of the team we have built. It takes anywhere from eight to 12 months to get an employee trained to be highly productive,” Mitchell explains, “so retention of good workers is crucial.”

Adding into the mix foreign competition for market share and innovations like highly expensive CAD (computer-aided design) technology further intensifies the pressure on companies like Hartford City Foam. Fortunately, thanks to Mitchell’s leadership, skilled engineering support, and talented and dedicated employees, there is some product diversification under way that promises to help that ship navigate the economic waves.

New products that are emerging from outside the packaging box include a shoulder pad for hand-held rocket launchers, prosthetic legs, pads for both English and Western horse saddles, and the masks and arrow tips for an archery tag game. 

Anxiety is running high from Blackford County to China now because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The ability of a microscopic virus to wreak havoc on the macroscopic economy spotlights the interconnectedness of the world’s people and their well-being.

Mitchell fully expects a ripple effect to arrive here in the coming weeks, a disruption in the supply chain of raw materials coming from China where the corona virus has caused shutdowns of factories for a spell. But the disruption actually started before COVID-19, explains Mitchell.

“One of the sources of a non-woven material we used in the production of airline pillow covers is in China and we’ve been paying a 14% tariff on that product since the trade conflict with China began,” he says. “You either have to find a way to absorb that cost or you have to join in the scramble to find alternative materials, which can be disruptive to the business cycle as well.”

Rusty Mitchell may have had to cut his managerial chops as a reduction-in-force expert, but once he got to Hartford City he has applied all the force of his entrepreneurial imagination and his engineer’s capacity for practical outcomes to nurturing and growing a successful business that is a key element in the community’s well-being. 

Hartford City Foam is nothing less than a textbook case for how economic development works and what it can mean to a community struggling to make the goal of being Positively Blackford a reality.