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The Di-Dro Manifold System product line is complementary to Associated Spring's Nitrogen Gas Spring Manifold System product line. The addition of the Di-Dro Manifold System product line expands the company's reach in high-quality gas springs for use in diverse industrial applications requiring high force and/or compact dimensions. Applications range from tool and die manufacturers, to industrial robots, to dump trucks to waste compressors around the world.
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Stockholm, Sweden-based AxIndustries has acquired AB Sverull, a distributor of bearings, transmissions and seals, also based in Sweden.
Sverull has annual sales of SEK 125 million with more than 45 employees  ; at offices in five cities.
After the acquisition, AxIndustries will have annual sales of more than SEK 600 million in bearings, transmissions and seals. It has mroe than SEK 1.1 billion in sales overall. AxIndustries is a part of Axel Johnson International.
Sverull will continue to be run as an independent company in AxIndustries.
Altra Holdings, Inc., Quincy, MA, has agreed to buy power-transmission product manufacturer TB Wood's Corporation, Chambersburg, PA, for $24.80 a share.
TB Wood's, with sales of $118.9 million in 2006, will become a fully owned subsidiary of Altra.
“TB Wood's is a great fit with the existing Altra platforms and meets our disciplined acquisition philosophy perfectly, said Michael L. Hurt, chairman and CEO of Altra. “The acquisition of TB Wood's broadens our growing coupling product line and adds engineered belted drive systems as well as adjustable speed electronic drives and systems to our product portfolio."
TB Wood's offering of elastomeric couplings fills a gap for Altra and will expand engineered coupling revenues by more than 50%. ...
Saint-Gobain's Building Distribution Sector has acquired Galvano Groothandel BV (the Netherlands), Schulte Tiefbau (Germany) and four companies belonging to the Norman group (Channel Isles).
Galvano Groothandel BV is a plumbing-heating wholesaler in the Netherlands. With estimated sales of 84 million euros in 2006, the company has 177 employees. Through this acquisition, Saint-Gobain Building Distribution establishes a foothold on the Dutch distribution market for plumbing-heating products and strengthens its European Division dedicated to this market.
Germany's specialist civil engineering distributor, Schulte Tiefbau operates 13 branches specializing in water supply. With sales of 62 million euros ...
Ferguson has acquired Grif-Fab Corporation, a distributor and fabricator of fire protection systems with three locations in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. In the year ended Nov. 30, 2006, Grif-Fab had revenue of $28.3 million.
UK-based Wolseley plc, Ferguson's parent company, has recently made three other bolt-on acquisitions in addition to the Grif-Fab buy. The four in total will add 29 million pounds, or $37.7 million, to annual revenues.
Since Aug. 1, 2006, Wolseley has made 33 acquisitions in Europe and North America totaling 342 million pounds, or $458 million.
According to recent news reports, St. Gobain has put its abrasives unit up for sale. Forbes reported that AFX News carried the news, but St. Gobain would not comment on the possible sale.
St. Gobain's abrasives unit had 2005 sales of 1.4 billion euro, 4% of the Group's total.
Competitive pressures, a history of operating losses, limited stock liquidity and trading volume, and the cost of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley all played a part in leading Strategic Distribution to give up the public life and agree to sell to Platinum Equity for $10 a share, or $30 million, last month.
Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter recently spoke with MDM Editor Lindsay Young about his new book, A Sense of Urgency. Kotter has researched and written a series of leading books on change management including Our Iceberg is Melting, a tale of business change told in fable form. Kotter says one of the biggest mistakes organizations make when pursuing change is not creating a high enough sense of urgency among employees to spark the needed shift in direction. The current economic situation has exasperated change efforts in many companies.
As Kotter says in his latest book, A Sense of Urgency: At the beginning of any effort to make changes of any magnitude, if a sense of urgency is not high enough, and complacency is not low enough, ...
Distributors can improve shipping predictability and decrease costs by reevaluating how they receive product from their suppliers. This article looks at how LTL is a little-considered option but can cost half that of parcel delivery and a third of overnight air deliveries.
Beyond renegotiating existing contracts, many wholesale distribution executives don't consider changes that can be made to shipping procedures to save money and improve cash flow.
It's like this is the way we've been doing it for so long, we don't think that there is another way, says Doug Savage, president of Bearing Service Inc., Livonia, MI.
But reevaluating shipping options and processes to get product from the manufacturer to the distributor can lead ...
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