When you think of a place like Sheboygan, Wisconsin – some 850 miles or so as the crow flies from Cedartown – you wouldn’t think it would have a local connection.

But for four decades now, the Sheboygan Paint Company has produced millions of gallons of industrial paint right here in Polk County as the company expanded their reach into the southeast in the 1980s. Now decades later, the company has an international reach and products in Cedartown go across the country and to Canada and Mexico.

What would the founders of Sheboygan Paint Company think about the progress of their firm today based on where they started making wood varnish for a chair manufacturer? For certain, that’s a question that can’t be known, but one thing is for certain: the Brownrigg family in charge of the company are sure that their venture will still be around when in 2121, the eighth and ninth generations will be unearthing a time capsule and asking the same question.

CEO Peter Kirton provided encouraging words for employees and thanked them for their hard work past and present, along with Chair of the Board Brock Brownrigg, who was excited that the Cedartown plant’s production capabilities continue to grow and ship even more paint than ever before.

“We break records here because of the quality of the people we employ,” he said. “You guys have made this happen. I’m very glad to be here to honor 100 years, but also honoring all the people that we’ve employed.”

Kirton added that he expects the company to continue for one important reason: customers will always need some kind of paint to protect their equipment.

“I expect that 200 years from now we’re still going to need industrial coatings, I just don’t quite know what they are going to look like,” he said.

A key to that future might have been buried on October 1. Plant Manager Scott Porterfield explained the significance of all the items going into the time capsule: including a full list of every Cedartown employee, a card they signed, mementos from the COVID-19 pandemic like masks and hand sanitizer, along with other items like a copy of a resolution passed by State Rep. Trey Kelley for the occasion, and a sample of a new patent-pending paint that Sheboygan Paint Company came up with.

Even a pencil was included, thought of ahead of time over a pen to avoid any leaks that could damage the items buried in the ground outside the front entrance of the plant.

Family members of the next generation to run the company put in the labor of filling the hole where the time capsule now sits, covered in concrete and surrounded by a small brick patio. Employees even thought to include a Sheboygan Paint Company logo laser cut in metal as a marker of where it rests in the ground, waiting for someone to come around in a century’s time and unearth it. 

The local plant will remain busy until then doing what they do best: making paint and helping out the community where they can. Underway currently within the facility is a fundraising campaign – Pennies for a Purpose – in which employees are being asked to donate pocket change to help a worthy cause during the holiday season.

Sheboygan Paint located their second and only other manufacturing plant in Cedartown in 1984 when their customer base began to expand in the southeastern United States, especially in Rome when General Electric generated medium-sized transformers at their West Rome facility. Most important for the company’s history here was ensuring they moved to a location in the south that felt much like what they had back home in Wisconsin.

The company on a national scale began in Sheboygan in 1921 to produce wood varnish for the chair manufacturing industry and expanded to other products for industrial customers. They expanded their production capabilities with a new factory in 1969, opened the plant in Cedartown 37 years ago, and through a merger in 2003 expanded their east coast service when acquiring Sentry Paint.

Sheboygan Paint Company’s product lines are mainly found on the surfaces products you might not use daily, but you’ll likely see their paints covering items like dumpsters, air bottles and cylinders (think gas bottles like those used in welding,) on industrial machinery, and in various other applications.

Paint and dyes developed for livestock, molded plastics, textiles for items like firehoses, and even a coating used in industrial smoke stacks also come from Sheboygan Paint as well.