Laclede Chain history

Annual sales by 1944 reached the $10 million mark as hostilities overseas neared their conclusion.

The $40 million generated in sales by 1950 had grown to nearly $90 million by the end of the decade, enlarged by the growing prominence of and dependency on scrap steel companies.

Part of this ongoing program to modernize its manufacturing capabilities included the replacement of its four open-hearth furnaces with two 225-ton electric arc furnaces in late 1965.

The return to prosperity put Laclede in a position to bolster its operations, which the company did in mid-1984 when it acquired the chain manufacturing division of Nixdorf-Krein Industries Inc.

In 1985, after cost-cutting measures first implemented three years earlier had saved Laclede $30 million, the company paid its first dividend in eight years, having racked up 14 profitable quarters in a row while many of the country's larger steel companies continued to record staggering losses.

The elder Riley, who had a background in manufacturing steel tubing, and a group of investors bought the chain company from bankrupt Laclede Steel in 2001 and began operating it as a separate entity.

In 2010, company president and CEO Jim Riley and long-term general manager Steve Heuett purchased Laclede Chain from the private equity company that held majority stake in a management buyout, and we’ve been family-owned ever since.

A smaller plant in Vicksburg, Miss., opened in 2011 to make some of Laclede’s traction chains.