Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)

Appleton is the world's largest producer of carbonless paper. Once a division of National Cash Register (NCR), in 2001 employees invested $107 million from their pension monies to finance an $810 million buy-out, one of the largest employee buy-outs ever. Today, the 100% employee-owned company employs 3,400 people, including 1,400 in the Appleton area. Read more about Appleton...

With more than 24,000 employees and $5.4 billion in revenue, CH2M Hill, Inc. is a majority employee owned global engineering and operations business.  It has also won numerous awards for its environmental sustainability approach and for having an excellent employee work environment. In 2014, Engineering News-Record voted CH2M Hill to its Top 100 Green Buildings Design Firms and to its Top 200 Environmental Firms Sourcebook. The company has been named on FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list four times.

Founded in 1991, Chroma is an employee-owned company whose primary product is filters that are used in microscopes. Technically, Chroma is not an ESOP, but it is nonetheless 100 percent employee owned, with each individual's ownership stake varying according to seniority. In its first year, Chroma employed 7 and had sales of $300,000. A decade later, the number of employee-owners had risen to 54 and sales exceeded $12 million. Read more about Chroma Technology Corp....

Started in Boston in 1790 and now based in Norwich, Vermont, America's oldest flour company has grown from a family-owned, mail-order business with five employees in 1990 to a 100 percent employee-owned (ESOP) business with over 180 employees and $45 million in annual sales. In January 2008, King Arthur Flour became a B-corporation (indicating a commitment to public benefit as well as profit). It was also among the 25 companies listed in WorldBlu's 2007 list of most democratic workplaces. Read more about King Arthur Flour...

100 percent of the New Belgium Brewing company is owned by the coworkers through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).  The company also offers financial training and book management so all employees are educated on the business of doing business. Read more about New Belgium Brewing...

With roots back to early “scavenger” companies founded in San Francisco in the early 1900s, Recology is a 100 percent employee owned company dedicated to building resource ecosystems that protect the environment and sustain communities.  To do so, the company’s services include street and commercial facility cleaning, landscaping and maintenance; waste collection, recovery, processing, sorting and transfer; waste recycling education; organic material collection and processing; and landfill management.  In all its work, the company is committed to a “zero waste” approach, which means finding ways to use waste products in a way that benefits the environment and only landfilling materials for which no use has yet been found.  Today, Recology is recognized as the largest employee-owned company in the resource recovery industry and serves as a parent to over 40 subsidiaries that provide integrated services to over 670,000 residential and 95,000 commercial customers in California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington.  Recology hires directly from the communities it serves, aims to purchase local goods and services when possible, and supports community development programs.

Founded as a family-owned business in 1880, the company has expanded to offer tree and lawn care services in 40 states and 4 Canadian provinces. A 100% employee-owned company since 1979, the company currently has approximately 5,000 employee-owners nationwide. Read more about The Davey Tree Expert Company...

Founded in 1982 by two Atlanta-area businessmen and converted to an ESOP in 1992, Wayfield now has 8 locations and over 500 employees. In 2016, the grocery won the Center for Civic Innovation’s Corporate Civic Impact award for its commitment to educating the community about healthy living.