CERAMO SHIPS OUT MORE THAN 1 MILLION FLOWERPOTS EACH WEEK ALL ACROSS COUNTRY

JACKSON -- One million flower pots roll out of the Ceramo Co. kiln each week, soon bound for stores and garden supply centers all over the country.

For Vernon L. Kasten Jr., the company's national sales manager, making things out of clay is a family tradition.

His great-grandfather, R.C. Kasten, in 1895 became half owner in a brick-making business that evolved into Kasten Clay Products, still in existence. The two companies sprang from the same family but are separate entities.

Ceramo was started in 1945 by Kasten's father, Vernon L. Kasten Sr. While finishing his master's degree in ceramic engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, he and fellow student Raymond Jones and professor Dr. Paul G. Herold decided to start manufacturing clay flower pots.

The company is on Highway 72 West, just west of the intersection with Highway 25 in Jackson. The shale clay for the pots originally was dug just outside the company's doors but that supply ran out. The clay now is taken from a field about 8 miles west of Jackson.

The company makes more than 100 different kinds of garden supplies, including clay flower pots sized from 1 1/2 inches to 12 inches. The company also buys garden supplies it does not make and distributes more than 1,500 different garden center items.

Ceramo is the primary supplier of pots for crafts in the U.S. On a recent day, five tractor trailer loads of pots were headed for a Michael's Crafts center in Florida. They make one pot used to make bread in.

Many flower pots are shipped into the U.S. from foreign countries, but Ceramo is the only U.S.-owned firm still producing clay flower pots.

"When we started there were 55 companies in the United States," Kasten said. "Now, for all intents and purposes, we're the only one left." He said the other companies disappeared because they failed to modernize.

Computer-controlled robots are taking over much of the pot-making work previously done by employees, in part because the low unemployment rate makes workers difficult to find, Kasten says.

Now in its spring cycle, the company currently employs about 100 people.

The company has four German-made robotic presses that turn lumps of clay into pots. After the pots are pressed they are dried out to reduce moisture to 1 percent and then fired in a 1,750-degree oven for 30 hours, depending on the size of the pot.

The plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.