About Indiana Rubber & Plastics

Three generations of manufacturing, joint venturing and professional outsourcing.

Our beginning traces back to 1956 when Kenneth Pickett left his position in the laboratory at Firestone to start Iris Rubber Company., Inc., a custom manufacturer of molded rubber parts. In 1973, his daughter, Wanda Chatel, gained onwership of that operation and son Terence (Terry) Garrity entered the business in 1982.

Wanda and Terry founded Indiana Rubber & Plastics in 1988 and entered into a partnership with our joint venture partner, Cardinal Industries, Inc., our manufacturing operation for molded plastics and rubber, which continues to this day.

That partnership combined our sales, administrative and technical support skills with Cardinal's amazing approach to tooling which lies at the heart of our inexpensive tooling program known as ToolSaver. Cardinal is an 80-employee, thee shift operation with 14 plastics injection presses and 4 rubber injection presses and a tool room complete with CNC and EDM equipment. All tooling production except heat treating and specialized mold texturing is performed in the plant.

In addition, Cardinal has a full time drafing, purchasing and estimating department. Together we offer the short-to-medium run customer the capabilities of a large supplier without the bureaucratic tangle.

The majority of our business involves custom molded plastics and rubber; however, we have gradually added other capabilities from tested and proven outsource partners, designed to complement custom molding so long as they give our customers access to custom manufacturing without a major front end investment. At the same time, we seek to always maintain low price leadership in which inexpensive tooling doesn't mean sacrificing excellent part economics.

Today we ship throughout the United States and Canada; however, we also ship to Europe and the Far East.

Future goals include investment in a designed-in low overhead molding operation in the upper Midwest, expansion of our sales group of independent agents and expasion into new capabilities in rapid prototyping.

FROM THE SHOP FLOOR TO JOINT VENTURING...

Indiana Rubber & Plastics is unique in being an administrative, support and sales organization independently owned and yet Cardinal Industries is in every sense our corporate sister and we have been "together" since 1988.

In addition to Cardinal's capabilities, we have our own CAD capabilities and some raw materials sourcing and purchasing duties at our office in Arcadia (about 30 miles north of Indianapolis).

Not to downplay our own manufacturing knowledge and experience, owing to three generations in our plant in Cicero, Indiana, Wanda and Terry have not just managed but at various times worked on the shop floor operating all the equipment found in a typical rubber operation.