CLEVELAND, OHIO — BF Acquisition, LLC sold the remnants of its Vermont group of companies for at least $3.8 million more than it paid. BF Acquisition, a subsidiary of Park-Ohio Holdings Corp., in Cleveland, purchased the Vermont companies from bankrupt Goldman Industrial Group earlier this year.

"We're satisfied with the results," said BF Acquisition president Hunter Banbury. "There are a lot of expenses involved in what we do, but it was profitable for us."

BF Acquisition split the businesses and their assets to maximize that profit. The sale of the individual businesses brought BF Acquisition $800,000 more than the $6.2 million it paid. The sale of assets taken from the companies brought another estimated $3 million.

The Goldman Industrial Group Inc. and its subsidiaries, including Bridgeport Machines, Inc., declared bankruptcy in February. Bridgeport secured debtor-in-possession financing and continued its Bridgeport, Conn.-based operations. Hill Loma, Inc. was sold to Magnum Integrated Technologies, Inc. in Brampton, Ontario, and is operating as a subsidiary of Magnum.

The remaining subsidiary companies were sold to BF Acquisition in May 2002. Included in the sale were the Jones & Lamson Vermont Corp., a maker of precision lathes founded in 1829, and its spin-off companies, J&L Metrology, Fellows, and Bryant Grinder. The Vermont group included former giants of the machine tool industry and employed more than 500 people in Springfield, Vt., as little as two years ago.

This reflects an overall trend of manufacturing jobs leaving the Northeast, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. Local officials tried to keep the companies in Vermont. Vermont Machine Tool Co. in Springfield, Vt., purchased Bryant Grinder and Vermont Precision Machine Services, also in Springfield, purchased J&L Metrology. The other companies were purchased by Bourn & Koch Machine Tool Co. in Rockford, Ill.

The situation remains bleak for machine tool manufacturers. According to the U.S. Machine Tool Consumption report, machine tool sales in the Northeast are down 38 percent year-to-date from 2001 figures and the national sales are down 25 percent. In 2001, machine tool sales were already down over 50 percent from its peak of $5.5 billion in 1997.