Briana Pace | Southern Indiana Business Report
In 2008, Celebration Ice consisted of one five-ton ice maker and a handful of local customers in Dubois County. Today, it has expanded to a plant producing over 100 tons of ice per day for clients across Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky,
The company’s growth has not slowed, servicing festivals, concerts, 4H fairs, concrete pours, Camp Atterbury and more. The existing plant can hold about 150 tons of ice, but they sell nearly all of it each day and truck ice from St. Louis two-to-three times per week just to meet demand. There is no room for backup reserves— yet.
A freezer that can hold up to 600 tons of backup reserve ice is in construction and set to be completed in October.
“We’ll fill that freezer up in the winter,” Mark Seibert, CEO of Celebration Ice, said, “and if there’s ever an ice plant break-down here, we’ll have enough capacity over there to last for a week or two.”
Two years ago, Seibert and his team completely revamped their production process. Demand for their ice had grown to the point where they had a waitlist of customers.
“We just kept adding an ice maker, adding an ice maker, adding an ice maker, to the point where I had seven ice makers,” Seibert said. “It wasn’t very efficient to try to run seven ice makers all the time.”
They decided to switch to two 50-ton ammonia ice makers and added robot palletizing. With this process, no one touches the bags of ice until they are completely sealed; creating the safest product possible.
Amongst all the changes, one thing that will stay the same is the company’s dedication to customer relationships. When someone calls Celebration Ice, it’s Seibert who answers the phone. Clients know him by his first name; they know about his family, the company’s drivers and more.
“That’s what I grew up on,” Seibert said. “My dad had a business; that’s how he treated his customers. We miss the days of being able to talk to somebody on the phone anytime you want. It’s very rare now with businesses, so we try to keep that going.”
In the coming years, Seibert hopes to continue the company’s growth. He wants to continue expanding within the community and add more employees. For as much product as Celebration Ice supplies, it’s a small team behind it. There are only about 23 employees during the summer, several of whom are high school and college kids. When they go back to school, the company downsizes to 14 workers for the rest of the year.
“We pretty much want to be able to service our territory, keep our customers happy, put out a good product,” Seibert said, “and be able to meet the demand during the hot days, the dog days of summer, like we’re in right now.”