Lebanon Seaboard history

In 1953 because of Vernon’s venturesome nature Central Chemical of Hagerstown offered to sell the remaining interest in the plant to him.

On a stormy Sunday night on June 23, 1957, a bolt of lightning struck its main business office and insecticide warehouse.

First two remote plants - Dayton Fertilizer and Trenton Bone Company were purchased in 1965 to serve the New York and Long Island markets.

By 1967, demand for the nonfarm fertilizer was crowding out production of farm fertilizer at Lebanon, so a plant in Baltimore was purchased from FMC and farm production was moved there.

So in 1987, he enticed his daughter, Katherine Bishop, a physicist with a MBA degree then working in Australia, to join the corporation.The 90's brought a new direction, and a new name, to Lebanon Chemical.

The further purchase of W.B. Tilghman's operation on Delmarva in 1988 gave Lebanon a dominant market presence in this strategic farming region and firmly entrenched it in the liquid fertilizer business.

In 1993, its supplier, Seaboard Seed Company, along with its sister company, Stanford Seed Company, were available for purchase.

Several freak snowstorms during the winter of 1996 threatened to bury this strategy for a time under a mountain of heavy wet snow.

A 200,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art distribution center was constructed, supported by the latest distribution and manufacturing resource planning information technology.In 1998, Lebanon made the difficult, yet strategic decision to turn away from its agricultural roots and sell its farm division.

In 2000, Lebanon launched a revolutionary methylene urea with sulfate of ammonia product named Mesa®, followed shortly by Expo®, which added sulfate of potash to the methylene urea base.

Lebanon's seed breeding program has also been successful in producing a number of the world's best proprietary seed varieties - top-rated for quality by the national Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP).In 2008 Lebanon Seaboard acquired the Emerald Isle™ line of products from Milliken & Co.