Humble Beginnings

The idea behind CKM, Inc.

In 2016 Carl Sheeley had an idea of building a fine-chemical manufacturing company in the midwestern US that combined his expertise in manufacturing with his passion for engineering, while improving upon outdated operational paradigms. This core idea would become his driving force for the next year. In March of 2017, Carl established CKM, Inc. where he hit the ground running to bring his vision to life. Through successes in consulting and sourcing jobs, CKM turned a profit within its first three months of operations and has remained consistently profitable.

In 2017, Carl expanded the operation and secured an 8,500 squared foot manufacturing location on the Root River in Racine. In 2018, CKM expanded to a 12,000 square-foot facility, set up R&D, packaging, shipping and scale-up capabilities, and began installing reactors, filters, distillation and wiped-film evaporation systems. With the growth of the company came the growth of the CKM staff. In 2018, CKM filled two key positions by adding a Director of R&D and a Director of Operations. These two roles have been instrumental in helping to secure long term development and manufacturing business as well as reaching one of the company’s main goals of turning CKM into a zero environmental impact operation with no waste discharge to municipal sanitary or storm systems.