Film and sheet extruder Farber Plastics Inc. has taken on a private investor.
The investment recently allowed Freeport, N.Y.-based Farber to complete a strategic recapitalization. Financial firm Blaige & Co. of Chicago worked with Farber on the deal. Details of the investment were not disclosed.
“I've been doing this myself for a long time,” owner and President Lewis Farber said in a Jan. 8 phone interview. “It will be good to have a partner with intentions of growing the business.”
The partnership actually is with several local investors, he added. “This will be part of a transition with an eye toward them becoming full owners,” Farber explained.
“It wasn't the highest offer, but it was the best fit,” he said. “This is a great thing for our company.”
Farber specializes in production of rigid film and sheet made of PET and high-impact polystyrene for a variety of commercial and industrial applications. The firm also operates a closed-loop system, recycling its own post-manufacturing scrap as well as providing a recycling service for its customers.
In a news release, Lewis Farber said that working with Blaige “resulted in multiple offers from a variety of investors and ultimately in a final offer that significantly exceeded our expectations.”
He added that the offer “was with a local partner that we never could have found on our own.” Farber first learned of the Blaige firm through an article in Plastics News.
Blaige Chairman and CEO Thomas Blaige said in the news release that his firm “achieved a significant premium above the initial target evaluation” in the Farber deal.
Farber Plastics employs 26 in a 35,000-square-foot space and has annual sales of around $10 million. The Farber family opened the firm in 1974. Lewis Farber has led the business since 1978.
His father, the late George Farber, had been working in the plastic sheet industry since the early 1960s. The firm's original focus was on high-impact polystyrene, but most of its products now are made from PET.