Brush Engineered Materials acquires thin-film filter maker Barr Associates
OCTOBER 26, 2009--Brush Engineered Materials (Mayfield Heights, OH, USA; www.beminc.com), through its subsidiary, Williams Advanced Materials (WAM), has acquired privately held Barr Associates (Westford, MA, USA; www.barrassociates.com). The transaction, valued at approximately $55 million, was financed with internally generated cash and proceeds of approximately $25 million from a $240 million revolving line of credit.
Barr Associates has approximately 300 employees in three leased facilities in the Westford area. The company is a manufacturer of precision thin film optical filters that enable complex technologies and components throughout the defense, aerospace, medical, energy, semiconductor, telecommunications, lighting and astronomy markets. Applications include high energy lasers, thermal imaging, night vision, environmental sensing, blood analysis, DNA sequencing, surveillance, targeting, and gas and fire detection.
Brush says the acquisition brings highly complementary businesses together to enhance the company's technology base in the high-growth, technically demanding thin film coatings and optical filters market segments. The addition of this business will provide a new source of revenue and margin contribution. It further broadens the company's advanced materials technologies and product portfolio.
In recent years, Brush has made strategic acquisitions to augment its thin film and coatings capabilities, including the purchase of Thin Film Technology (Buellton, CA, USA), a producer of precision optical coatings, thin film hybrid circuits, and highly engineered thin film coatings and services, and Techni-Met (Windsor, CT, USA), a manufacturer of large-area precision thin films.
-- Posted by Conard Holton, Vision Systems Design, www.vision-systems.com