May River Capital has completed the sale of Dickson to Copeland, a compression technology and controls company owned by Blackstone. Dickson makes sensors, connected monitoring devices and cloud software that track temperature and other environmental conditions for pharmaceutical, life sciences, healthcare and medical device customers that must prove regulatory compliance. The company is based in Addison, Ill.
Founded in 1923, Dickson was a family-owned, single-site business when Chicago-based May River acquired it in April 2018. Since then it has added operations in Montpellier, France, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, now serves customers in more than 50 countries, and completed the take-private of Oceasoft, a publicly traded French monitoring company. St. Louis-based Copeland plans to pair Dickson’s platform with its own cold chain controls and software. Houlihan Lokey was lead financial advisor to May River and Dickson, with William Blair as co-advisor.
