Paying Homage to our McPherson Facility, Family, and Community
For over 50 years our McPherson facility and family proudly served our customers and our community.
In 1965, Paul Werler, a humble chemical engineer and family man, opened Chemstar’s McPherson facility with a local partner, in order to provide high-quality drilling starch to the growing oilfield market. Chemstar’s McPherson plant quickly became renowned for its consistent quality, on-time delivery, all the while tackling our customers’ toughest technical requirements. Leveraging its proximity to both abundant supply of corn, as well as customer operations in the oil patch, McPherson continually expanded processing technology and capabilities, driving Chemstar to become the first choice of customers for demanding drilling starch applications around the world.
As the world suffered through a major oil and gas market downturn in the 1980’s, the McPherson team continued to drive into new processing capabilities, broadening its product portfolio to include other industrial applications, such as adhesives, construction materials, and mining. Thanks to McPherson’s success, Chemstar was able to expand our footprint to other facilities, including our Brookhaven, Mississippi, and Carlton, Minnesota production facilities. Today, these operations employ state-of-the-art production methods to create a diverse set of drum-dried pre-gel starches, extruded, and derivatized starches for customers. Thank you to the McPherson team and community for all of their hard work and success.