The Past And Current Year In Mergers & Sales

As we often do at the beginning of a new year, we’ve pulled together a reminder of all the sales, acquisitions and mergers from the previous year for our opening FER Dealer Report. And we noticed a curious fact: Lots of deals in the equipment and supplies manufacturing and service and parts segments, but very few in the dealer community. So we asked our friend, golf buddy, and (yes, “full disclosure”) advertiser Ron Rosati of Ronald Rosati Business Brokerages Services about it. What follows is his assessment of the market, followed by our listing of all the 2015 deals noted in FER and its news products last year.

“The M&A marketplace continues to be active in the foodservice equipment and supplies sector. With cheap money and resurrected balance sheets, there is lots of money chasing good companies. And they are getting fair prices for their business. The only thing that will slow this down will be rising interest rates and/or a recession. Both of these are showing signs of happening sometime in the coming couple of years.

“The aftermarket (service and parts) continues to consolidate, as the chains look for national coverage for their equipment servicing; 2016 will be very active , once again, in this space.

“Consolidation also is ongoing in the manufacturing sectors with pronounced activites involving international companies and smallwares. The rapid growth of Internet dealers continues to put pressure on margins, driving many smaller light equipment and smallwares manufacturers to look for an exit. The changing faces at many of the heavy equipment manufacturers will result in more deals going forward

“The dealer segment with M&A has been slower than past years as many dealers are continuing to look for ways to combat margin pressures coming from the many Amazon wannabes in the space.

“Look for a number of large deals to happen in all three spaces ( aftermarket, manufacturer, dealers) in 2016.”

Here is a listing of the deals of which we wrote in 2015, in more or less chronological order. We’ve stripped down the company names for the sake of space. If you need reminding of the details of specific deals, use the search mechanism on our fermag.com website to search for the company names.

Manufacturers:

–Middleby bought Induc Commercial Electronics (induction products, China) and Marsal & Sons. (On the domestic applicance side, they later bought AGA Rangemaster [U.K.]and Lynx Grills).

–Halton Group acquired Air Scrubbers.

–G.E.T. merged with Bugambilia Int’l. and later with Culinaire by Mikon Int’l.

–Franke Foodservice bought Easy-Serv Products (Canada).

–Electrolux acquired Veetsan Comm. Machinery (warewashing products, China).

–Automated Equipment acquired Aerotech.

–Standex sold Bevles brand to Legacy Cos.

–Manitowoc announced it would spin off the Foodservice division as a separate company.

–Ecolab bought Swisher Hygienics’ U.S. operations.

–Crown Brands bought Co-Rect Products.

–Micro Matic USA bought Valpar Industrial (Ireland).

–Vollrath bought Pujadas (Spain).

–Ali Group acquired InterMetro Industries from Emerson Electric.

–Aquion bought Procam Controls OptiPure line.

–Restaurant Technologies bought Pure Fill Solutions.

–D Cubed Group bought Kysor Panel Systems from Manitowoc and Dover Industries’ Hill Phoenix Div. walk-in business and formed KPS Global.

–Component Hardware Group bought Specialty Food Service Hardware and its sister company, Vision Parts & Accessories (Canada).

Dealers/Distributors

–The Boelter Cos. bought Direct South.

–TriMark USA combined its previously purchased Century Concepts with its Strategic Equipment division.

–Bakery distributor Horizon Bradco bought Burke Food Equipment.

–The Curtis family sold Curtis Equipment (Oregon) to an employee stock-ownership plan (ESOP) company.

–Biggest distributor news M&A news of 2015 was the end of the Sysco/U.S. Foods proposed combination thanks to antitrust objections.

Aftermarket Service & Parts

–Diversified Food Service Supply (All Points, FMP, Tundra, etc.) was sold by KRG Captial Partners to Mountain  Capital.

–Heritage Foodservice Group bought Choquette CKS (Canada).

–Diversified bought D.S.I. Parts.

–Heritage was sold to Windjammer Capital Investors by The Jordan Co.

–Tech 24 bought the Service Solutions Group from Franke Foodservice.

And, not least, as we hope you’ve heard, we had our own M&A event Jan. 1, 2016 as WAI bought us from the Gill family.

If you are selling or buying this year, good luck!

Cheers,

Robin Ashton

Publisher”””