Kemin Industries announced that its co-founder and chairman of the board, R.W. Nelson, died on April 7. He was 98.

The company supplies over 500 specialty ingredients for human and animal health and nutrition, crop technologies, biofuels and more. Kemin Industries is family-owned and -operated, with more than 3,500 employees in 90 countries.

Rolland Wade “Bud” Nelson was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 28, 1927. At the age of 7, his family moved to Des Moines, where he graduated from Dowling High School and later, with a degree in biology and chemistry from Drake University.

Nelson served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1945 to 1947 and was honorably discharged as a corporal. He earned service ribbons while deployed to the Philippines at the close of World War II.

He and his wife, Mary Nelson, formed Kemin Industries in 1961, using $10,000 in savings and their family’s living room as an office while raising five children.

Nelson secured four patents and received recognition for export excellence from President Richard Nixon in 1971 and President Jimmy Carter in 1978. Nelson also received the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Award in 1972, the State of Iowa Economic Impact Award in 1987, the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Achievement Iowa Award in 1991, and the Iowa Biotechnology Association’s Entrepreneur Achievement Biotechnology Award in 2004. He was inducted into the Iowa Business Hall of Fame in 2006.

“We deeply mourn the passing of R.W. – our family patriarch and one of the visionaries behind Kemin. He was beloved by our family, countless customers around the world, and thousands of Kemin employees whose lives he touched for more than six decades,” said Chris Nelson, president and CEO of Kemin Industries and the eldest son of R.W. “He was tirelessly committed to our family, his faith, the community, and was Kemin’s most dedicated marketer and sales champion, coming to the office every day for nearly 60 years. While R.W. will be deeply missed by our family and countless people he impacted worldwide, the breadth of his life’s work and dedication to servant leadership is to be celebrated.”

R.W. and Mary Nelson were known for their philanthropy to organizations focused on science and general education, affordable housing, and disaster relief. In Central Iowa they supported organizations such as Living History Farms, Iowa State University, the Science Center of Iowa, Dowling Catholic High School and Drake University. They opened the Kemin Primary School in China, helped rebuild a fishing community in India after a tsunami, and sent Kemin teams to Nepal and Brazil for Habitat for Humanity global builds. They received the 2019 Robert D. Ray Iowa SHARES Humanitarian Award for their dedication to outreach in remote parts of countries affected by severe natural disasters.

Nelson served on dozens of boards and committees for industry trade groups, banks, the American Institute of Entrepreneurs, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Drake University, private primary and secondary schools in the Des Moines Diocese, and the Greater Des Moines Committee. He was an industry member of the American Chemical Society and the American Feed Industry Association. He supported Kemin’s long-term partnerships with the World Food Program, Habitat for Humanity and Ellipsis.