Measuring and conveying machinery company Schenck Process Group is slated to change ownership.
Private equity firm Blackstone Group LP of New York has agreed to acquire Schenck from another private equity company, IK Investment Partners of London. The companies did not disclose terms of the agreement in a Sept. 21 news release.
Schenck, with operations around the world, offers a wide array of process equipment to weigh, feed, convey, screen and filter products for numerous industries, including plastics. Equipment oriented to plastics processing are aimed at compounding, plastic granulation, plastic film recycling and thermoplastic polyester production.
Blackstone spokesman Andrew Dowler said in a phone interview from London that the ownership change should be finalized before the end of this year.
Schenck Process LLC of Kansas City, Mo., is the North American headquarters for the equipment company. It runs manufacturing facilities in Sabetha, Kan., and Whitewater, Wisc., that focus on bulk material handling and dust collection.
The two production operations were separate businesses until their consolidation as Schenck Process LLC in 2014. Dowler said it is too early to discern whether the U.S. operations will be affected by the changeover.
Dowler said Blackstone has no plan to intergrate Schenck with any of the other companies in its portfolio. In total, Blackstone managed assets of $371 billion as of June 30. Some $100 million of the investment relates to private equity transactions.
Of direct interest to plastics firms is a feeder designed to handle light and fluffy materials such as chopped polypropylene, PET plastic film and glass or carbon fibers that Schenck debuted at K 2016 in Düsseldorf. The Simplex flat bottom is a loss-in-weight or volumetric feeder with a bottom-driven vertical agitator and an auxiliary agitator to ensure smooth product flow into and out of the feeder.
