Union Partners, a Chicago based holding company with a growing portfolio of electrical steel manufacturers and steel service-supply centers across North America, is continuing its acquisitive path with another transaction in March and word of an additional expansion in the works.
Maksteel, a Canadian-based company which Union acquired just last year, has now acquired LexWest Steel, a Los Angeles-based distributor of flat-rolled steel products. No financial terms were disclosed for the deal, which will see LexWest rebranded as Maksteel USA.
Lamination Specialties Corp., one of the largest manufacturers of electrical steel lamination in North America, also came under Union ownership last year. The deal added to Union’s lineup of other manufacturers of electrical steel and steel lamination that include Mapes & Sprowl Steel and Cortran. Combined, the companies serve a broad mix of transformer, motor and generator manufacturers among other industries. Pictured above is the inside of a Mapes & Sprowl warehouse.
Union Partners is a hands-on holding company of metals and logistics companies. With 21 locations throughout North America, its operations also include Contractors Steel and Chicago Steel. According to co-founders Chris Hutter and Paul Douglass, Union was founded by families with multi-generational experience in steel, real estate and logistics.
“Lamination Specialties is a welcome addition to our electrical steel platform,” commented Douglass when it was acquired in March. Established more than 60 years ago, it distributes products throughout North America and overseas. In addition to its lamination capabilities for transformers, ballasts, motors and custom designs, it operates a full-service electrical steel service center.
It has 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space with state-of-the-art facilities including over 40 high-speed stamping presses, four continuous roller-hearth annealing furnaces, precision slitting, cut-to-length and blanking equipment, plus value-added offerings including MITRE cores, distributed gap cores, and robotic welding capabilities. It supplies electrical steel laminations for a variety of applications in hundreds of shapes and sizes, as well as processed silicon electrical steel and cold rolled low carbon electrical steel.
Founded in 2001, LexWest offers slitting and cut-to-length capabilities, and carries a variety of hot rolled, cold rolled, coated and pre-painted flat rolled products. With its addition, Maksteel, which is based in Mississauga, now operates out of nine facilities in the US and Canada plus a new expansion in Arizona is in the works, said Union.
For more information, visit: http://www.unionpartnersllc.com/
