Milton Street Capital has closed two acquisitions with the buys of the life sciences business of publicly traded Worthington Industries, and International Cryogenics.
The life sciences business (LSB) of Worthington is a manufacturer of cryogenic stainless steel and aluminum storage freezers, dewars (vacuum flasks), and shippers that are used to store biological specimens. LSB’s products are used in biomedical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology research; in-vitro fertilization; biorepository (storage) applications; and animal breeding. LSB is headquartered near Mobile in Theodore, Alabama. The assets of LSB were acquired by Worthington in December 2015 from Taylor Wharton for $33 million as part of Taylor Wharton’s chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
Like LSB, International Cryogenics (ICI) is an Indianapolis-based manufacturer of cryogenic aluminum, freezers, dewars, and shippers used in biomedical applications. LSB and ICI will be combined by Milton under a new company named IC Biomedical and led by CEO Steve Shaw and CFO Jim Hoppel.
“Milton Street’s experience in complex corporate carve-out transactions made them the ideal partner for combining LSB and ICI. We look forward to executing on our vision to build a leading biomedical cold storage business,” said Mr. Shaw. “The merger of these two established businesses provides an unequaled platform to serve an ever-growing and more demanding biomedical market. We will manufacture in a medical device accredited facility providing products with the highest regulatory compliance and quality.”
Mr. Shaw has over 25 years of cryogenic biomedical market experience. He has been the president of ICI since January 2019 and from 1993 to 2016 he was the president of the biomedical group of Chart Industries.
Mr. Hoppel has been the CFO of ICI since August 2019. Earlier, from 2012 to 2014, he was the CFO of Taylor-Wharton and from 2004 to 2010 he was the chief administrative officer (CAO) and the vice president of corporate development at Chart Industries.
“We are thrilled to partner with Steve and Jim to form IC Biomedical,” said Francis Carr, a managing partner at Milton Street. “The combination of Steve’s leadership experience and well-known market presence, and LSB’s and ICI’s long history of manufacturing high quality cryogenic biomedical storage products makes this an excellent fit. Biomedical cold storage is a high growth sector, and we are excited to partner with an industry-leading management team to build a company that is both customer-focused and operationally excellent.”
Houston-based Milton Street makes control investments in North American-based companies with enterprise values of less than $100 million and EBITDA from $5 million to $15 million. The firm specializes in complexity or “story” transactions for family-owned businesses, corporate carveouts, under-performing businesses, and growth equity investments. Sectors of interest include business-to-business industrial manufacturing, distribution and services.
© 2020 Private Equity Professional | November 4, 2020
