By: Adam Smith
Austin Morelock is CEO and President of Calvary Industries, a specialty chemical manufacturer based in Fairfield, Ohio. His father, John Morelock, Jr., founded the company in 1983. Calvary makes blended process chemicals, including industrial cleaners, conversion coatings, metalworking fluids, and waste treatment chemistries, and in 2025 it partnered with Milwaukee private equity firm Mason Wells. Austin Morelock discussed the business, the industry, and the lessons he learned from starting on the plant floor.
How Would You Describe What Calvary Does Today?
We make the chemistry that keeps production lines running: pretreatment, cleaning, metalworking, and water and waste treatment. Most of what we sell is consumable. Customers use it up and reorder, and if it doesn’t perform, their line stops. We also blend, package, and process customer-owned products to spec, from one-gallon containers to bulk tank trucks. We have manufacturing in Fairfield and in Pineville, Louisiana, distribution partners in California and Mexico, and about 165 people.
Why Custom Formulations Instead Of A Standard Catalog?
Because no two lines are the same. The same cleaner that works on one plant’s steel parts can cause problems on another plant’s aluminum parts, with different water, a different oven, or a different coating downstream. We sell directly to the people running the process, and we start by understanding their problem. Sometimes that means adjusting a product we already make, and sometimes it means formulating something new. On average, we formulate 2-3 new specialty products every week; these are products that are custom formulated to meet the specific needs of individual customer applications. For example, we recently formulated a chemistry designed to help a customer extend the warranty on its coating, which supported its brand and its customers’ satisfaction.
You Grew Up In The Business. How Did That Shape The Way You Lead?
I spent summers in our maintenance department as a kid, then worked in chemical blending and operations before I ever sold anything. Later, I was an outside sales rep in Dallas, then Director of Sales and Marketing back in Cincinnati. Every one of those jobs taught me something about what our customers and our people deal with day to day. When I make a decision now, I think about how it will land on the plant floor and at the customer’s line, because I’ve been in both places. Our growing sales and technical departments are the backbone of the company, and they have played a large part in its growth. I am fortunate to have learned from my father, and those lessons equipped me to build strong commercial and technical teams.
What Changed With The Mason Wells Partnership, And What Stayed The Same?
What stayed the same is how we work with customers. The family and our senior management team invested alongside Mason Wells, so the people who built Calvary are still part of its future. What changed is that we have a partner that invests in people and has a deep network of industry resources. You can see that in the team we’re building. In April, Mason Wells assisted in recruiting Brent Westermeyer, our new CFO with deep private equity experience. In July, we brought on Brad Davis as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, after his sales leadership roles at Charter Wire, Dubois Chemicals, and Huntsman. Not only has Mason Wells invested heavily in our team, but they have also invested in our infrastructure to build capacity in anticipation of future growth.
Where Are Customers Pushing Finishing And Metalworking Chemistry?
Customers want chemistry that performs and is easier to live with: safer to handle, simpler to dispose of, and ready for tighter environmental rules. In finishing, that has meant more interest in alternatives to older chemistries. In metalworking, it means paying closer attention to fluid management, because concentration, filtration, and sump maintenance affect tool life and downtime as much as the fluid itself. I talked about that in a Time Bulletin feature on the science of tool life. We have worked on developing chemistries that address these priorities while meeting the quality standards our customers require.
In 2020, Calvary Launched A Sanitizer Line In Days. What Did That Teach You?
That a small, focused team can move fast when it has to. When the pandemic hit, demand for some of our core products dropped, and store shelves ran out of sanitizer. We got the permits, installed new processing equipment, and started producing hand and general-purpose sanitizers. We sent the first batches to our employees and their families, then to orphanages, fire and police departments, and our customers. It reminded me that being an essential supplier means responsibility to the community, not just to the customer.
Products Finishing was named to its 40 Under 40 in 2019. What Advice Would You Give Younger People In Manufacturing?
Learn the work from the ground up and find mentors. I credit the management team I worked alongside for much of what I know. Manufacturing needs people who understand both the product and the customer, and the fastest way to get there is to spend time where the product is made and where it’s used.
What’s Next For Calvary?
We have spent the last 12 months building out our teams and processes. Now that our team is established, we are further building out our product and manufacturing capabilities. We are investing millions of dollars to expand our production and warehousing capabilities while refining our go-to-market strategies across targeted end markets. Our objective is to build a solid position in the segments we believe offer the strongest long-term growth potential.
Outside of Calvary, Austin Morelock is Vice President of the Juniper Tree Foundation, his family’s Cincinnati-based foundation focused on orphan care. More about Austin Morelock is at austinmorelock.com.
