Essex Wire Corporation — Fort Wayne plant (later Essex Group / Essex International / Superior Essex)

1930 · Fort Wayne plant 1936 – today

Founded (company): 1930, Detroit, Michigan. The Superior Essex company history (Reference for Business / International Directory of Company Histories) and the company's SEC filings agree: Addison E. Holton established Essex Wire Corp. in Detroit in 1930, producing battery cables and wiring harnesses for the Ford Model A from leased space in Ford's Highland Park plant. This is a Fort Wayne plant entry, not a Fort Wayne founding — Essex was not a Dudlo spin-off, and any account treating it as one is not supported (see the Dudlo entry).

Fort Wayne arrival: 1936. Essex acquired the vacant former Dudlo Manufacturing plant on Wall Street in Fort Wayne in 1936 (company history; News-Sentinel agrees). Headquarters move — CONFLICT carried unresolved, as queued: the company history gives headquarters relocated to Fort Wayne in 1954 (with Walter F. Probst succeeding Holton as president in 1958); the News-Sentinel says the company "moved its headquarters from Detroit to Fort Wayne 30 years later" than 1936 — i.e. c.1966. A third datum cuts across both: the company history also records that in 1982 Essex announced a $3 million investment in its Fort Wayne facility "which would become the company's world headquarters," completed 1984 — that wording is compatible with a headquarters already in Fort Wayne being made the world headquarters, but no source in hand says so; all three statements are carried, none is silently preferred. The company's principal executive offices were at 1601 Wall Street, Fort Wayne in its 1995 Form 10-K — (SEC filing).

Founder: Addison E. Holton, World War I Navy veteran — (company history). He retired in 1962 and died in 1980, aged 83.

What it did: In Fort Wayne, magnet wire at the former Dudlo plant — joining Rea and Phelps Dodge (Inca) to make Fort Wayne the magnet-wire centre — within a much wider company making wire harnesses, battery cables, building wire (the Paranite brand, from the 1932 Jonesboro, Indiana plant), wire and cable, controls and engineered products. In World War II Essex produced magnet wire for the transformers used by America and its allies, field telephone wire for the Army Signal Corps and harnesses for B-24 bombers, and was awarded the War Department "E" Award (company literature, via the company history — as company literature).

Course: Rapid national growth from the Fort Wayne base: sales $355 million by 1965, seven divisions, 41 plants, NYSE listing that year; operating as Essex International Inc. by 1970 with 25,700 employees; a new 30,000 sq ft Metal Products facility built in Fort Wayne in 1968; sales about $845 million in 1973 with about 100 plants (all company history). A labour / legal mark is carried as the history carries it: AFL-CIO criticism in the late 1970s as anti-labour, and a September 1978 Justice Department price-fixing charge against Essex and five other wire makers, which the company denied (company history, citing the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 27 Sept 1978).

Fate: Absorbed repeatedly; the Fort Wayne operation continues under Superior Essex, but the headquarters left Fort Wayne. Chain: merged into United Technologies (then United Aircraft) in 1974; bought out of United Technologies in 1988 by MS/Essex Holdings (management + Morgan Stanley) and private thereafter; Bessemer Holdings 1992; public again 1997; acquired by Superior TeleCom in a deal announced September 1998 and finalised 1999 ($1.4 billion), forming Superior Essex, then North America's largest wire and cable maker (company history). By the 2008 SEC filings Superior Essex's principal executive offices were at 150 Interstate North Parkway, Atlanta, Georgia — (SEC Form 8-K, Aug 2008) — so the headquarters was in Atlanta by 2008; the exact year it left Fort Wayne is not established on the sources in hand. LS Cable (Korea) acquired Superior Essex in 2008 for about $900 million, the merger completing 7 August 2008, with Superior Essex continuing under its name, headquartered in Atlanta (SEC Form 8-K and the joint LS Cable / Superior Essex release, 11 June 2008 — in the filings). Fort Wayne work continued after the headquarters left: in 2009 the Atlanta- based company consolidated distribution into a 200,000 sq ft Fort Wayne facility and opened an 80,000 sq ft Essex Brownell manufacturing operation in Fort Wayne, transitioning production from Clifton Park, New York (contemporary trade-press releases). No Fort Wayne closure is in hand; the entry's fate is therefore headquarters departed, operation continuing under a Korean-owned, Atlanta-headquartered parent — not "closed."

Sources:

1. Superior Essex company history, via Reference for Business / International Directory of Company Histories (Detroit 1930, Holton; Jonesboro 1932; Fort Wayne plant 1936; headquarters 1954; 1965 sales/plants/NYSE; Essex International by 1970; United Technologies 1974; buyout 1988; Bessemer 1992; Superior TeleCom deal 1998/finalised 1999; Atlanta headquarters address) — https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/85/Superior-Essex-Inc.html
2. Same history, via Encyclopedia.com — https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/superior-essex-inc
3. Frazier, News-Sentinel (Essex bought the former Dudlo plant in 1936; headquarters from Detroit "30 years later"; still making magnet wire in Fort Wayne and Kendallville at that writing) — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/2000/1910/ind6.php
4. Essex Group Form 10-K, fiscal 1995, via SEC database (founded Detroit 1930; principal executive offices 1601 Wall Street, Fort Wayne) — http://pdf.secdatabase.com/2417/0000033565-96-000005.pdf
5. Superior Essex Form 8-K, Aug 2008, via SEC (principal executive offices 150 Interstate North Parkway, Atlanta; LS merger completed 7 Aug 2008) — http://pdf.secdatabase.com/220/0001104659-08-051787.pdf
6. LS Cable / Superior Essex joint release, 11 June 2008, via SEC Exhibit 99.1 ($900M acquisition; headquarters to be maintained in Atlanta) — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271193/000089882208000675/exhibit991.htm
7. Trade & Industry Development, 2009 (Atlanta-based Superior Essex expanding Fort Wayne distribution and Essex Brownell manufacturing) — https://www.tradeandindustrydev.com/industry/manufacturing/news/superior-essex-expand-manufacturing-operation-2013