CJB Industries


A Partnership to Build a Dream:
Clinton and Jeana Beeland Focus on the Future of CJB Industries

cjb_3 As Clinton and Jeana Beeland sat in their renovated 19th-century office space, located in downtown Valdosta, Georgia, they recall the journey of CJB Industries, the company they started nearly 20 years ago in a small make-shift facility with six part-time workers.

Today, with approximately 90 employees disbursed among two plants comprised of more than 310,000 square feet of industrial space, a renovated historic corporate office, and an applied technology center, CJB Industries is gaining prominence as an industry leader in providing the highest quality products and services in chemical manufacturing and chemical packaging services.

The Early Years

After graduating from Georgia Tech in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering, Clinton and Jeana, who earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 1989, took industry jobs in Salisbury, North Carolina. The couple quickly immersed themselves within their individual careers, both gaining extensive industrial expertise, as well as management skills that would become beneficial as they established their own company.

A young plant manager with National Starch and Chemical Corp., Clinton was quickly climbing the corporate ladder and after a few years was in the position to relocate to Kansas City, Missouri. A native of Macon, he and Jeana, who grew up in Valdosta, decided to look at other geographical options, including Georgia.

“I wanted to see what opportunities were in Georgia,” Clinton said. “Jeana’s father made a connection for me with Rusty Griffin [then president of Griffin Corporation] and we talked about different opportunities.”

Six months later Griffin Corp. offered Clinton a job, and he and Jeana moved to Valdosta.

“Valdosta is very different today than it was 25 years ago; there has been a lot of growth in the area,” Clinton said. “We felt like this would be a good fit for us as we started to raise a family.”

Clinton began to settle into his job at Griffin, while Jeana started working at Levi Straus, first as an engineer and then assistant plant manager. The Beelands quickly became an integral part of the community. Jeana served on the Valdosta City School Board and as a member of the Wiregrass Georgia Technical College Foundation Board. Clinton is an active member of professional organizations including the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA), Chemical and Specialties Management Council, and the Georgia Tech Lean Consortium Group. The Beelands are both active with Leadership Georgia and Leadership Lowndes, Christ Church Vestry, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Development Authority.

“The job at Griffin allowed me to manage some different processes. I am a doer person. Just let me go; I don’t have to have a lot of information,” he said. “I can figure it out as I go.”

Clinton reflects on the experience he gained working at Griffin Corp. and considered it a time of great personal and professional growth.

“Griffin had phenomenal growth, and I was managing some of what they did in manufacturing. They gave me a huge growth opportunity. I think it was also a link into what I wanted to do all along, which is run my own business,” Clinton said. “During the five years I was with Griffin, I had at least five different titles. I did sales and buying, which allowed me to make some great connections.”


A Time of Reflectioncjb_2

In 1996, Griffin Corp. was preparing for a joint venture with DuPont and Clinton found himself once again examining his career prospects.

“Jeana and I were at a crossroads in our careers,” Clinton recalls. “I was 30, which is kind of a time when you start to weigh in on your options. I had a lot of energy, but I was traveling a lot, and Jeana was working. I knew something was not right and it was time to step back.”

During this period of reflection, Clinton had the opportunity to work on a small project for a large multinational corporation. This company had an issue that wasn’t within Griffin’s realm to address, so Clinton took on the project, which he thought would only last a few weeks.

“My brother-in-law had a building that used to be an old fish market and he wasn’t using the back,” Clinton said. “I went over one Saturday and swept out the fish scales and all kind of stuff in the back. Took two tables from my mother-in-law and that was our assembly line.”

The project involved repair and assembly and included removal of plastic flashing from termite spikes and then assembling them as a monitor for termite activities.

“We were basically fixing a problem,” Clinton said. “I thought it would last a month, and then we would be looking for what to do next. I figured it would be a stopgap, but it ended up going three months. I was still working for Griffin, helping them finish up some projects and deciding what was next.

After completing the project, other jobs began to emerge.

“In the beginning, the jobs were not glamorous, but we developed those relationships and they were great opportunities,” Clinton said. “We did the smaller jobs that other companies didn’t want.”

Building this trust with companies became an essential foundation for CJB Industries.

“Because we were willing to do these smaller jobs, the ones other companies didn’t want to touch, we started building relationships and used those contacts as stepping stones,” he said. “We had to build trust for the big projects to help us grow.”

Other projects came, and CJB Industries was beginning to become a reality. After working in two different small locations—with limited growth potential—the need for a larger facility was becoming more evident.

Two Decades of Success

cjb_1_cropOfficially founded in March 1997, CJB Industries began leasing a building from Bill Holland, which was an old pole barn located on five acres in a small industrial area on Cypress Street.

Soon afterward a client offered six tanks and some auxiliary equipment in exchange for manufacturing services.

“I had the opportunity to get these tanks; the problem was they were in New Jersey,” Clinton explained. “I was used to taking things apart and putting them back together again.”

The removal of the tanks proved to be more of a challenge than Clinton had anticipated.

“When Tim Crow and I arrived this guy asked if we had a wrecking crew coming,” Clinton laughed. “I said, ‘We are it.’ We had a forklift coming and a couple of flatbed trucks. We got the five tanks out OK, but by the time we started on the last one we ran out of propane. It was late on a Saturday night, and I am thinking, ‘Where are we going to get propane at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night?’”

What is Clinton’s secret to success? He has never met a challenge he did not want to conquer. After waking up a stranger in a nearby farmhouse, he had his propane and was back to the task.

“We now had a location and some tanks. We were now in the chemical manufacturing business,” Clinton said. “That is how we started.”

CJB Industries’ client base was growing and so was the need for a permanent location that would allow the company to continue its expansion. In 2001, CJB Industries purchased the Cypress Street location, which included a recently constructed 40,000-square-foot building.

“The Cypress Street facility became Jeana’s ‘beach house.’” Clinton joked. “But the timing could not have been better.”

Jeana also made the commitment to join the company full time and began taking on a variety of administrative functions, specifically human resources.

“I did a little bit of everything in the beginning,” said Jeana, who earned a Master of Business Administration from Valdosta State University in 1995. “As we began to grow, we were fortunate to hire some wonderful people, and I started focusing more on the human resource side of the business.”

The first Cypress Street expansion was quickly followed by a second one that included additional warehouse space and an analytical and formulation laboratory.

In 2002, CJB Industries began producing automotive undercoating, which earned them the prestigious recognition as a Ford Quality One Supplier.

“Moving into the automotive industry pushed us to set up ISO standards,” Clinton said. “These are quality standards and were a requirement to sell to automotive companies. It was a big step in how we began to improve our business structure.”

CJB Industries now holds ISO 9001 Quality Management and ISO 14001 Environmental Management certifications. These highly regarded industry standards allow CJB Industries the ability to implement change and continuous improvements to improve products, processes, and people.

Expansion continued in 2005, and Clinton described the company “at a crossroads” in the direction it would take. Would the focus continue toward manufacturing services or proprietary products?

The decision was reached to focus more on the manufacturing services.

CJB Industries continued to experience tremendous growth including three more additions to the Cypress Street facility, along with the demolition of the original pole barn facility.

In 2009, CJB Industries became a multi-plant operation with the purchase of a plant on Gil Harbin Industrial Boulevard, located in the Azalea West Business Park.

Within the Gil Harbin plant, CJB Industries produces herbicide and industrial chemical products.

Over the next few years, CJB Industries expanded the facilities at both the Cypress Street and Gil Harbin locations.

In 2015, the company established CJB Applied Technologies, which is focused on assisting customers in formulation development and commercial development and looking at potential future opportunities in plant health and related areas.

The CJB Way

As CJB Industries continues to grow in “bricks and mortar” the company is also striving to build a high-quality workforce.

“Once we started to grow, we then established a set of values called ‘RITES,’ which represent the basis for what we want our employees to refer to when making decisions,” Clinton said. “It has been a process and has taken time for people to adapt, but they did, and they realize this is how we manage the business.”

The RITES represent Respect, Integrity, Trust, Excellence, and Stewardship. CJB Industries stresses these core values to employees at every level within the company.

“This is a great company; we want it to be a place that survives and builds and helps people develop beyond where they are,” Clinton said. “We want to help people become better and see people grow.”

Each employee is carefully selected and provided training to ensure they represent CJB Industries’ core values.

Providing professional and personal support to each employee, at all levels, is an important part of Jeana’s role as vice president for human resources. Though her early academic training was focused on industrial engineering, Jeana enjoys the daily interaction with the employees and the opportunity to instill the company’s philosophy and values.

“What is important to us as a company is making sure that people know they are important,” she said. “They need to feel confident in what they are selling and servicing.”

The Beelands are proud of the longevity of many employees that started with them in the early days and are still part of the team two decades later.

“Though this is our business, it is CJB’s people that make it happen,” Jeana said. “I believe that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything. What we do is focus on what we can accomplish.”

CJB Industries’ formula for success is found in the partnership of Clinton and Jeana Beeland, and their desire to provide the highest standards in chemical manufacturing and chemical packaging services within the industry.

 

Jeana Beeland is pictured with some of CJB Industries Valdosta State alumni. CJB credits its ability to attract and retain an educated workforce, in part, to having Valdosta State University and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College within the region.

Jeana Beeland is pictured with some of CJB Industries Valdosta State alumni. CJB credits its ability to attract and retain an educated workforce, in part, to having Valdosta State University and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College within the region.

 

Well-Educated Workforce Key to Growth of CJB Industries

CJB Industries’ ability to attract and retain an educated and highly-skilled workforce is credited, in part, to having Valdosta State University and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College (WGTC) located within a few miles of the company’s two industrial plants.

“CJB Industries has grown because we have been able to hire some wonderful people,” said CJB Industries Vice President for Human Resources Jeana Beeland, who was appointed in 2015 by Gov. Nathan Deal to serve on the State Workforce Development Board. “We have employees who want to grow with the company, and we encourage them to get additional education either through Valdosta State [University] or Wiregrass [Georgia Technical College].”

Beeland explains that having Valdosta State University, a comprehensive university, and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College, which provides specialized training for new and existing business, within the region offers a tremendous benefit for workforce development.

Keith Stephenson, the plant manager at CJB Industries’ Cypress Street and Cypress Annex facilities, benefited professionally from the training and education he received at Valdosta Technical College (now Wiregrass Georgia Technical College) and Valdosta State University.

“I was working in the chemical industry and was moving up, but at some point, I decided that if this is going to be my career, I would need to go back to school,” said Stephenson, who began working at CJB Industries in 2015. “At the encouragement of my manager, I went to Valdosta State and completed my associate degree.”

Stephenson said that having an associate degree helped him advance, but there were still barriers. Several years later he returned to Valdosta State University and received a Bachelor of Applied Science in technical studies.

“I did it the hard way. As I talk to young people today, they are faced with the same things I had to deal with, a family and a full-time job,” said Stephenson, who has worked for more than 40 years in the chemical manufacturing industry. “In today’s environment, there are a lot of ways to help you afford a college education. You just have to identify your priorities.”

Jimmy LeFiles knew as a young boy that he wanted to do something with science. Following the example of his father, who taught science at Valdosta High School, LeFiles entered Valdosta State College after high school and earned a Bachelor of Science in biology.

He was recently hired as the technical manager at CJB Industries Technology Center and Manufacturing Annex and uses his more than 35 years of experience to assist customers with their development and analytical needs.

“I am a problem solver,” said LeFiles, who has developed five U.S. patents for chemical-related products. “I like the hands-on part; I do not mind managing projects, but I like the creative work.”

LeFiles is putting his research skills to the test as he works with customers in formulation development, as well as the commercial development of new products as part of CJB Applied Technologies division.

“Corporate America is cutting back, and many companies do not have the resources to do the development work, so this is where we fit in,” LeFiles said. “The company may have an idea for a product or a problem with an existing product, and often they do not have the resources, and this is where we can help. We have the analytical equipment and the formulation and process experience; we can take a product and test it and see what needs to be changed or develop new ones.”

When she arrived at Valdosta State University, Tiffany Stewart never thought working in a science lab would lead to a career. A track standout in high school, she loved sports and wanted to be a physical therapist.

“When I started working in the lab at Valdosta State I started to really like chemistry,” said Stewart, who earned a Bachelor of Science in biology and minor in chemistry at Valdosta State University in 2009. “The biology and chemistry professors were great and very supportive. I learned about laboratory etiquette and safety, which has helped me with my job here at CJB Industries.”

Stewart credits Dr. Tom Manning, professor of chemistry at Valdosta State University, with helping her secure a job at CJB Industries as a lab technician.

“I took a lot of his classes [Manning] and CJB Industries sent him a job announcement,” said Stewart, who is from Riceboro, Georgia. “He came into the lab one day and told me about a job at CJB, and I applied. Working with Dr. Manning gave me the chance to do research and even have some of our work published.”

The research experience Stewart received is typical of the practical application and knowledge undergraduate students gain at VSU.

Manning says having CJB Industries available to provide research opportunities to college students is an important part of their educational experience at VSU. CJB Industries, as well as others businesses, can hire local graduates and retain them as part of the region’s growing technology-driven workforce.

“CJB is a technology-driven industry that makes products of high worth,” Manning said. “These products not only provide jobs locally, generate taxes, and are sold across the United States, but they are also the type of industry that can trade with foreign countries.”

CJB Industries encourages its employees to further their education and provides financial assistance to earn an undergraduate or graduate degree.

“Having VSU and Wiregrass here makes it easier to access qualified employees—not just in hiring but continuing education as well,” Beeland said. “If they want to get their bachelor’s degree, they do not have to leave to do so.”

Employees hired by CJB Industries also participate in the Georgia Workforce Ready or WorkKey programs, which are administered by the Technical College System of Georgia. The program helps employers select, hire, train, develop, and retain a high-performance workforce.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.