Urschel Laboratories Names Tim Crammer President in Chesterton

Chesterton-based Urschel Laboratories named Tim Crammer president effective October 12, working alongside fourth-generation CEO Rick Urschel. Crammer spent nearly 20 years at Henny Penny Corporation, most recently as senior vice president of operations and manufacturing, and helped lead Henny Penny's 2015 transition to an employee stock ownership plan, the same year Urschel itself became employee-owned. Henny Penny completed its own ESOP transition in 2014 and executed a structured CEO handoff a decade later, in 2024, with the outgoing CEO moving to executive chairman, and Crammer sat on Henny Penny's leadership team during that transition. Urschel is now, a decade after its own ESOP conversion, hiring its first outside president while Rick Urschel keeps the CEO title, a sequence that points toward a multi-year succession rather than a routine operations hire. The appointment also follows JBT Marel's $3.9 billion merger, which is building full-line equipment offerings that compete against Urschel's pure-play cutting equipment niche.