Who Owns Barry-Wehmiller?

Thomas J. Barry and Richard A. Wehmiller founded the company in St. Louis in 1885, manufacturing bottle washers and pasteurizing equipment for the city's booming brewing industry. It grew steadily through the early twentieth century supplying breweries and dairies.

By the 1960s the business had stagnated. William Chapman gained control, and when he died suddenly in 1975, his 30-year-old son Bob Chapman inherited a struggling company with about $20 million in revenue, significant debt, and a shrinking brewing equipment market. Bob Chapman's response became the template for the next fifty years: acquire neglected machinery businesses, improve them, and never let the company depend on one industry.

Through the 1980s and 1990s the company bought packaging and paper converting equipment makers, folding in names like Hayssen, Paper Converting Machine Company, Accraply, and dozens more, most acquired cheaply because sellers undervalued them. Revenue compounded at roughly 18 percent annually across five decades.

The cultural transformation ran parallel. In the late 1990s and 2000s, Bob Chapman rethought management itself, developing Truly Human Leadership principles that the company then applied to integrating more than 150 acquisitions. Rather than slashing headcount after deals, Barry-Wehmiller retained and developed acquired workforces, a practice central to its reputation.

The portfolio broadened beyond machinery into engineering consulting through Design Group and into life sciences technology. By 2025 the company reached more than $3.6 billion in revenue with about 12,000 team members across 100-plus locations in 30 countries. Kyle Chapman became President and CEO in 2025, and Bob Chapman died on March 19, 2026, six months after publishing a tenth-anniversary edition of Everybody Matters.