Casket maker adding jobs on Far Eastside 2.24.11

INDIANAPOLIS STAR

A startup Indianapolis casket company will join an industry already dominated by Indiana manufacturers and hopes to stand out with a new line of metal caskets.

Genesis Casket Co., financed by the Spanish auto supplier Gestamp Automocion, said Wednesday it will spend more than $17 million to transform the former SMC Corp. of America auto parts plant on the Far Eastside.

Genesis plans to hire 150 people by summer at an average wage of $26 an hour, and turn out 30,000 caskets in its first year, said President and CEO William Anthony "Tony" Colson.

Gestamp North America, based in Troy, Mich., decided to expand into caskets to help replace declining sales of metal parts to the auto industry, said Colson.

Indiana already is home to two of the three largest casket makers in the nation: Batesville Casket Co. of Batesville and Aurora Casket Co. of Aurora. They and York Group of York, Pa., sell about 65 percent of the nation's caskets, said Mark Allen, executive director of Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America, in Lake Bluff, Ill.

Allen said it's rare to see a large startup company in the casket industry, which has seen a gradual decline in sales the past 10 years as more people opt for cremation over whole-body burial in a casket.

"What's unusual in this case is the size of this effort -- to come in with these facilities and 150 employees," Allen said of Genesis. "Usually we see companies starting with two or three employees."

Genesis picked Indianapolis, in part, because Colson grew up in the city, earned a degree from Indiana University and spent 17 years working for Batesville Casket, leaving in 2004 as director of business development. He left to be president of Wilbert Funeral Services, a burial vault maker in Chicago.

Genesis will get property tax abatement from the city for renovating the old SMC plant at 3011 N. Franklin Road and up to $4.5 million in state tax credits based on its job creation.

Colson said Genesis' backers are counting on a jump in yearly deaths, as the baby-boom generation ages, to keep casket demand high. U.S. annual deaths are projected to rise from the current 2.6 million to 4 million by 2040.

Job candidates can apply at hr@genesiscasket.com.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110224/BUSINESS/102240403/-1/7daysarchives/Casket-maker-adding-jobs-Far-Eastside