BLOOMFIELD, CT — Kaman Corporation announced Monday that its Aerospace segment has entered into an agreement to acquire GRW Bearing GmbH (GRW), a German-based designer and manufacturer of super precision, miniature ball bearings. The company is expected to have sales in 2015 of approximately $51.6 million.
GRW is focused on the demanding applications segment of the miniature ball bearings market, where low noise requirements, extreme temperatures, ultra-high speeds and/or caustic environments require both exceptional engineering design and continuous operating performance capabilities. GRW operates out of two state-of-the-art production facilities in Rimpar, Germany and Prachatice, Czech Republic.
The announcement came just three days after Kaman announced its acquisition of Calkins Fluid Power.
Kaman Chairman, President and CEO Neal Keating said, “GRW will be a great addition to our specialty bearing and engineered products lines, and adds additional scale and new market segments to our most profitable product lines. The businesses are aligned through a focus on solving the critical problems of OEM customers and achieving the highest standards of performance in the most demanding applications”
“As with our current bearing manufacturing businesses, Kamatics Corporation and RWG Germany GmbH, GRW is focused on developing and manufacturing technology driven products with unsurpassed quality. Few companies in the world have the technical capability to design and manufacture miniature bearings capable of achieving such high performance standards,” stated Gregory Steiner , President, Kaman Aerospace Group. “We believe this combination will allow us to drive synergies through additional sales growth, as well as operational efficiencies, particularly given the proximity to our existing operations in Germany.”
Robert Starr , Executive Vice President and CFO added, “On a pro-forma basis this acquisition is expected to leave us well within our target range for leverage of two to three times EBITDA. The addition of GRW is expected to be accretive to earnings per share in 2016, excluding transaction costs.”
Terms of the transaction, which is expected to close by year end, were not disclosed.
