After Whirlpool Exit, Fort Smith Firm Diversifies to Stay Alive

One year after Whirpool Corp. shuttered its refrigerator manufacturing plant in Fort Smith, an ancillary business is still actively reinventing itself for the future, and doing quite well.

“We still have some work to do,” said Ron Embree, president and CEO of River Bend Industries. “It’s not time to slap nobody on the back yet.”

RBI, a $50 million company founded in 2006, is a top manufacturer of plastics and resins, largely because in the spring of 2008, Embree purchased Victor Plastics Inc. in Victor, Iowa.

The acquisition put RBI among the top 100 injection molders in the United States, serving 13 states throughout the South and Midwest.

In Fort Smith, RBI supplied plastic components for Whirpool’s side-by-side refrigerators.

But when Whirlpool closed its Fort Smith plant in June 2012, it affected several local manufacturers that counted Whirlpool’s Fort Smith operation among their largest customers.

“Since Whirlpool Fort Smith closed, we’ve probably lost 44 percent of our revenue,” Embree explained.

Some of that revenue, Embree said, is being made up for at the Victor plant, which is still doing a small bit of work for Whirlpool for the next year or so.

But the RBI facility in the River Valley is maintaining a footing as well. The 129,000-SF plant expanded its blow molding capabilities last year, and the number of employees has actually increased from 60 to 80 in the past 12 months.

Companywide, RBI employs 348 workers, Embree said.

“We’ve had some success with some projects,” Embree said. “We’re not near making up for the loss of revenue, but we have made up some of it.”

Production of two proprietary products has helped lead RBI’s efforts to diversify.

RBI has been the exclusive manufacturer of the Kosmo freestanding cooler — brought to market by a local inventor — for the past two years.

At its peak, production was up to about 4,000 units per month. An agreement with Sam’s Club to sell the items — with an MSRP of $39.99 — fueled production, but Embree said that relationship has “dwindled,” and production is down to about 1,000 per month.

The coolers are still sold at CV’s Family Foods, Marvin’s IGA and Sutherland’s.

RBI has also partnered to make a proprietary product for Hospitec Inc., a leading distributor of government-approved medical waste containers.

Hospitec, according to its website, supplies the only leak-proof containers available that meet Department of Transportation packaging standards.

The company’s exclusive supplier is RBI.  Embree said the Fort Smith plant produces about 5,000 containers (18 or 12 gallons) each month.

To be certain, it’s a different type of work for RBI. The addition of a value-added sector, versus just molding plastic and shipping it, is a bit more labor intensive.

Embree, however, takes pride that the company has been able to adjust to the altered landscape in Fort Smith’s manufacturing industry.

“I am happy that we are still paying the bills and the doors are open and we still have a foundation [of workers] who are employed, with an opportunity to employ more,” he said. “It’s not me who made that happen. It’s the people who actually work here who make that happen.”