The rubber plant of many names
Despite its many name changes over the years, the Welland structure spread out at the east end of John and Bernard streets facing railway tracks was always referred to as the rubber plant.
The company that established the rubber plant, Joseph Stokes Rubber Co., traces its origins back to turn-of-the-20th-century United States. Incorporated in Trenton, N.J., it was part of the venerable Stokes family business known for its manufactured rubber products.
Originally known as Standard Rubber Co., incorporated in 1881 by Joseph Oliver Stokes, who became convinced of the possibilities offered by the emerging rubber industry, it was reorganized a year later as Home Rubber Co. — an enterprise that continues to operate today.
Initially focused on the production of gossamer rubber clothing that was in demand at the time, the company switched to mechanical rubber goods circa 1884. In 1896, a second corporation was formed by the four Stokes family members who owned Home Rubber, under the name of Joseph Stokes Rubber Co., and a rubber reclaiming plant was acquired and enlarged in Trenton. The second company continued to manufacture mechanicals and tires, but these were soon discontinued and replaced exclusively by hard rubber goods.
The local operation of Stokes Rubber began when it was announced Aug. 19, 1920, thanks to the efforts of Welland’s industrial commissioner, Joseph Stokes Rubber Co. of Trenton had chosen the city as the location to build its Canadian rubber plant.
The chosen site for the plant was between John and Bernard streets just west of the train tracks (where the Infinity Rubber Technology Group site is now located). With a frontage of 192 metres facing the Grand Trunk Railway, it was indicated that another spur line of the tracks would be built along the length of the property to serve future expansion.
The ground for the new building was broken on John Street on Aug. 26, 1920, and production started in early 1921.
The initial workforce included 60 employees, and the majority of the product consisted of hard rubber battery cases. By 1928, the number of workers had doubled, and the product line expanded to include telephone receiver cases and moulded rubber automobile parts.
By the spring 1930, demand for Stokes battery cases had increased so much that the company was forced to add a machine shop, a laboratory and a shipping building to keep up. In the post-war boom of the 1950s, production focus shifted to manufacturing home products such as radios and vacuum cleaners, and came to include gas masks that would be considered a home necessity during the era of the Cold War.
In 1943, Stokes Rubber and its plants in both Trenton and Welland were bought by Thermoid Rubber Products of New Jersey. In 1951, the company name changed to General Tire & Rubber Co., and by 1988, it was simply shortened to GenCorp. As one of the leading manufacturers of rubber, plastic, and other products in North America, by that point the company employed 14,000 people, and supplied goods to such major clients as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. At one point it produced pucks for the NHL.
Suffering large numbers of layoffs towards the end of the 1990s, the plant became known as GDX Automotive in 2001, largely manufacturing vehicle sealing systems. In 2007, GDX became Henniges Automotive. As demand and manufacturing declined by the late 2000s, Henniges was one of the companies that was heavily impacted, laying off about 235 workers in 2008. In March 2011, Henniges announced the closure of its Welland plant, and the last workers would walk out of the facility by September.
The former rubber plant would stand empty until 2014, when Infinity Rubber Technology Group, formerly of Toronto, relocated to the site, and remains there today, lending new life to the old rubber factory that was once so wellknown to Welland.