Additives and colorants supplier Vivify Specialty Ingredients, backed by its private equity owner, has acquired Reitech Corp., a Reading, Pa., maker of pigment dispersions.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Vivify, a vertically integrated maker of specialty chemicals for colorant applications, specializes in dyes, organic pigments, slip additives, liquid colorants and specialty resins.
Reitech will help Vivify diversify its markets, which currently include food and beverage, industrial, cosmetics and personal care. Reitech supplies standard and custom color dispersions for applications including aerospace, industrial coatings and consumer goods.
Vivify also owns Calico Food Ingredients of Kingston, Ontario; Heritage Color of Savannah Ga., which supplies liquid pigment dispersions for the graphic arts and agricultural seed coatings markets; and Sandream Specialties, of Fairfield, N.J., a raw materials supplier to the cosmetics and personal-care industries.
"The combination of Reitech with … Heritage Color creates a pigment dispersion business with considerable scale and positions the combined company to take advantage of new strategic opportunities," Vivify CEO Devlin Riley said in a Feb. 15 news release.
Prakash Pradhan and Stephen Holtzman, who owned Reitech, will remain with the company as part of Vivify management.
Both companies have been in business more than 40 years, though Vivify previously was known as Aakash Chemicals & Dyestuffs Inc. Aakash was bought in January 2017 by CenterOak Partners LLC of Dallas. The name changed to Vivify in mid-2021 and the firm was acquired by Gryphon Heritage Fund, its current owner, in December 2021.
The Gryphon small-cap fund is part of Gryphon Investors of San Francisco, which in the fall also acquired a majority stake in Techmer PM LLC of Clinton, Tenn., one of North America's largest compounders and concentrate makers. The private equity firm also owns sheet extruder Pacur LLC of Oshkosh, Wis., which it acquired in 2020.
Craig Nikrant, operating partner with Gryphon Heritage Fund, said in the release that Vivify and Reitech will seek additional acquisitions to drive growth. As of the end of 2021, Gryphon Investors managed more than $9 billion in assets.