CHICAGO — Madison Capital Partners, which last year bought U.S. tubing and gasket extruder Holm Industries Inc., purchased an Italy-based counterpart, Industrie Ilpea SpA.
"It's the European version of Holm," said Madison Capital President Larry Gies.
Based in Malgesso, Italy, Ilpea generates annual sales of $250 million to $270 million from 25 plants in Europe, India, Brazil and the United States. The two U.S. extrusion plants are in Fort Smith, Ark., and Evansville, Ind. The company extrudes both plastic and rubber.
The deal closed March 1. Madison Capital, a Chicago-based investment group, bought Ilpea from a group of the company's managers and several European banks, Gies said during a March 6 interview at his office.
Global forces drove the move, Gies said.
"We wanted to be in the European market. It was the right match."
According to a Holm spokesman, Holm Industries has more than $100 million in annual sales from seven factories, most of them in the Midwest. But Holm — which, like Ilpea, extrudes products for the appliance, construction, automotive and industrial markets — had no presence in Europe.
Customers want the same plastics suppliers to serve them worldwide.
"The only way we could see of giving them global system solutions was to put the two businesses together," Gies said.
Madison Capital purchased Holm Industries in mid-2000 from Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. A year earlier, Cooper had acquired Holm from Standard Products Co.
Managers at both Holm and Ilpea own a part of the companies, Gies said. He said the owners of Ilpea now include Madison, a team of Ilpea managers and Italian investment group Investitori Associati.
Paolo Cittadini will remain at Ilpea as chairman and chief executive officer. Ilpea employs 2,290.
