A Year After the Mason Wells Partnership, Austin Morelock Leads Calvary Industries Into Its Next Chapter.
When Milwaukee private equity firm Mason Wells closed its investment in Calvary Industries on August 29, 2025, the deal marked a turning point for a company that had been family-owned for more than four decades. A year later, CEO and President Austin Morelock is focused on growing the Fairfield, Ohio, specialty chemical manufacturer without changing what made it attractive to an investor in the first place: custom chemistry, technical service and long customer relationships.
John Morelock, Jr., Austin’s father, founded Calvary in 1983. In the transaction, the Morelock family and Calvary’s senior management team invested alongside Mason Wells, so the people who built the business still have a stake in its next phase.
A partnership built on fit
The relationship took years to form. Mason Wells, which has invested in Midwest companies through family ownership transitions since 1998, spent several years getting to know the Morelock family before closing the deal, according to the firm’s acquisition announcement.
“We have spent a lot of time getting to know Mason Wells and have been very impressed by the firm’s professionals, most importantly its cultural fit with Calvary,” Austin Morelock said at the time. “At this inflection point in the company’s history, we are excited to bring in a firm that invests in people, partners with management, and has a deep network of industry resources to support Calvary’s growth.”
Chris Pummill, a managing director at Mason Wells, called Calvary “a unique business in the specialty chemicals sector.”
What Calvary makes, and how it sells
Calvary formulates and produces blended process chemicals, including industrial cleaners, conversion coatings, metalworking fluids, and waste treatment chemistries, for uses ranging from metal pretreatment to water treatment. It also blends, packages, and processes customer-owned products to client specifications, shipping in containers from one gallon up to bulk tank trucks.
The products are consumables. Customers use them up and reorder, and the chemistry has to perform on a production line where a failure stops work. Calvary sells directly to end users through a consultative process built around custom formulations and high-level service, rather than a catalog.
That model serves a wide customer base. Calvary supplies the appliance, architectural, automotive, contract manufacturing, food and beverage, heavy equipment, HVAC, metal fabrication, metalworking, military and defense, paper and pulp, and pretreatment industries, among others. The company runs manufacturing sites in Fairfield and in Pineville, Louisiana, uses third-party distribution locations in California and Mexico, and employs about 165 people.
Building the team for growth
The clearest sign of the company’s direction is the leadership team Calvary has added since the deal. In April 2026, the company named Brent Westermeyer Chief Financial Officer. Westermeyer brings nearly 30 years of financial leadership, including experience as CFO of private equity-backed engineered products companies. He was most recently CFO of Cincinnati-based Sur-Seal, where he oversaw finance, accounting, HR, IT, and supply chain. At Calvary, he is raising the company’s level of financial management and putting key performance indicators in place across the business. When he joined, Austin Morelock said Westermeyer “brings a wealth of experience in senior financial leadership and a proven ability to elevate performance.”
Three months later, in July 2026, Calvary named Brad Davis Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Davis leads sales for Calvary’s metal pretreatment, lubricant, wastewater treatment, and industrial cleaning chemistries. He was most recently Vice President of Sales at Charter Wire and earlier held sales and business development leadership roles at Dubois Chemicals and Huntsman.
“Calvary has a phenomenal culture and reputation in the marketplace for solving technical problems,” Davis said when the appointment was announced. “I’m thrilled to play a part in the next chapter of growth.”
“Brad has brought with him a level of commercial expertise that we did not previously have,” Austin Morelock said. “We look forward to working with Brad to restructure and emphasize our commercial teams without creating any negative consequences for our customers. Our customers shouldn’t notice a change in how we work with them. They should notice that we can do more for them.”
A CEO who started on the plant floor
Austin Morelock’s path to the top job began long before he had an office. As a child, he spent summers in Calvary’s maintenance department, then worked his way into chemical blending, according to a 2019 profile in Products Finishing. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, he worked in sales at Groupon in Chicago before joining Calvary as an outside chemical sales representative in Dallas.
He returned to Cincinnati, where he was born and raised, to serve as Director of Sales and Marketing, and became CEO and President in 2021. In 2019, Products Finishing named him to its 40 Under 40 class, which recognizes emerging leaders in surface finishing and manufacturing.
The company’s ability to move quickly showed in March 2020. As the pandemic cut demand for some core products, Calvary secured permits, installed new processing equipment, and launched a line of hand and general-purpose sanitizers. “We have created a new product line in a matter of days,” Austin Morelock told Products Finishing then. The first batches went to Calvary employees and their families, and later batches went to orphanages, local fire and police departments, and customers.
Beyond the business
Outside Calvary, Austin Morelock is Vice President of the Juniper Tree Foundation, the Morelock family’s Cincinnati-based foundation, which supports charitable, educational, and scientific work and focuses on orphan care. The foundation partners with Back2Back Ministries, which provides long-term care to vulnerable children and families worldwide. More about Austin Morelock is available at austinmorelock.com.
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