Tag Archives: norway

Press-Seal Gasket Corp: Fort Wayne Company Seals Future with Dynamic Approach

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Founded in 1954, Press-Seal Gasket Corporation has grown from a small Fort Wayne operation to a company with international reach, selling to customers in Israel, Sweden, Norway, Mexico, Canada, Japan and some Caribbean countries.

“When I first started as a salesman in 1978, I was just the 13th employee,” relays Chairman and CEO James Skinner, adding the company now has 138 on staff.

Skinner explains the company was initially founded by a concrete pipe producer who wasn’t satisfied with the quality of rubber gaskets available at the time. Ten years later following some deaths in his family, two attorneys serving as the company’s counsel ended up owning the company. They struggled to produce a reliable accounting report, so they called IBM to send a computer salesman out in 1964 to straighten it out.

“My father (Hank Skinner) was working for IBM and was sent out to Press-Seal and explained IBM could not sell them a computer because the company was too small, and the cost of the computer would have been half of its annual revenues.”

He did provide them with a bookkeeping system and a list of accountants who could keep it straight.

“Basically, they were so impressed with him that they offered him part of the business – to come in as general manager,” Skinner says. “Then over the next eight years, my father purchased the interest of the other two stockholders. Since 1964, our family has been involved in the management of the company, and I purchased it from my parents in 1984.”

Over time, the company has expanded from mainly pipe gaskets and pipe-to-manhole connectors, and in 1990 expanded into extrusion and molding. Press-Seal has also added a tool and die operation.

“That’s a similar story to how the company started,” Skinner notes. “I was unable to get good delivery from local tool and die shops because we were a small company and all the larger companies in the Fort Wayne market were their priority. So I bought a small tool and die shop in Columbia City and turned it from a small shop that was servicing the foundry and automotive industries to a shop that focuses on medical, aerospace, automotive and higher tech things. It’s now a fully integrated shop…

“It allows us to take a different tack on how things are made,” he adds, noting that stainless parts are a specialty of the operation. “While a lot of tool and die shops are going out of business these days, we are thriving. We find a lot of customers are in a lot of pain in terms of non-delivery and (a shop) not understanding the customers’ needs.”

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Electrifying Elkhart

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Elkhart’s recent economic struggles have been well-documented, most notably last year when President Obama visited. But hopefully the page is turning in Northern Indiana as Gov. Daniels and others laud the fact that a Scandinavian electric car manufacturer plans to bring several hundred jobs to the area.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and local officials joined executives from electric car manufacturer, THINK today to announce the company’s decision to locate its North American production facility in Elkhart, creating more than 400 jobs by 2013.

A leading international manufacturer of pure electric vehicles (EV) based in Norway, THINK is scheduled to begin selling the THINK City, one of the world’s first highway-ready EVs, in the U.S. later this year. The company plans to invest more than $43 million in building improvements and equipment in Elkhart. The plant is slated to begin assembling vehicles in early 2011. THINK’s investments in Elkhart will support manufacturing capacity for more than 20,000 vehicles a year. The company recently started delivering the latest generation of its THINK City model to customers in Europe where it has more than 1,500 cars on the road.

"We’ve said we’re out to make Indiana the electric vehicle state. It’s beginning to look like the state capital will be Elkhart County," said Daniels.

The THINK City can travel at highway speed for more than 100 miles on a single battery charge with zero tailpipe emissions. The vehicle is currently in production in Finland at the site of THINK’s manufacturing partner, Valmet Automotive, which also houses assembly facilities for Porsche AG’s Boxster and Cayman models. European production of the THINK City will continue at Valmet to support European market demand.

Inside INdiana Business has the full presser here.

“I Know What You Made Last Summer”

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‘Tis the season for scary movies — and, I suppose, scary concepts. We hear a lot about transparency here in the United States, and it certainly appeals to many voters in as much as we want to know what the government is doing. But Norway has taken the concept to an eerie new level, and it’s under that guise that they now reveal incomes of almost every taxpayer. Yeah, that’s right. You know that neighbor who always comes over and talks to you while you’re trying to do yard work? Well, he has a new topic: Your income.

Many media outlets use the tax records to produce their own searchable online databases. In the database of national broadcaster NRK, you can type a subject’s name, hit search and within moments get information on what that person made last year, what was paid in taxes and total wealth. It also compares those figures with Norway’s national averages for men and women, and that person’s city of residence.

Defenders of the system say it enhances transparency, deemed essential for an open democracy.

"Isn’t this how a social democracy ought to work, with openness, transparency and social equality as ideals?" columnist Jan Omdahl wrote in the tabloid Dagbladet. He acknowledged, however, that many treat the list like "tax porno" — furtively checking the income of neighbors or co-workers.

Critics say the list is actually a threat to society.

"What each Norwegian earns and what you have in wealth is a private matter between the taxpayer and the government," said Jon Stordrange, director of the Norwegian Taxpayer’s Association.

Besides providing criminals with a useful tool to find prime targets, he said the list generates playground taunts of my-dad-is-richer-than-your-dad.

"The children of people with low wages are being teased about it in the schools," Stordrange said Thursday. "People with low salaries are being met with comments at the grocery store, ‘How can you live on these low wages?’"