Indianapolis — Plastics company executives Mike Ruggieri and Tom Frank have some advice for plastics companies: Don't be afraid of looking at a private equity partner.
These financial partners are seemingly everywhere these days as deploying money in the plastics industry remains attractive to outside investors.
"Private equity often gets the negative name of coming in and tearing things apart. ... If you choose the right partner, it's not that at all. It's very much a partnership," said Mike Ruggieri, chairman of Comar, a packaging and medical device maker based in Voorhees, N.J. In fact, the exact opposite has been true for Comar, which has grown significantly during the past decade with the help of private equity backing.
"It was very much a partnership where they needed the management team, and we needed their funding. And those two things together really did some remarkable stuff for us," he said.
"It was a great run for us. We did nine bolt-on acquisitions along the way, some tremendous organic growth. We built three plants during the pandemic," Ruggieri recalls. "Doing that is not possible without really good equity partners in the business. So a great experience for us."
For Comar, having new owners also meant more accountability. And that's been a good thing, Ruggieri said. Even if it took some getting used to.
Comar dates to 1949 when Ruggieri's grandfather started the business. His uncle later was in charge before he took over as the third generation.
"My uncle ran the business like a lifestyle. I ran it more like a business, so it started to professionalize things, a little more structured," Ruggieri remembered.
Graham Partners Inc. originally bought into Comar in 2013 with an eye on helping the company grow beyond its two locations in New Jersey. Graham Partners later sold its majority stake in the firm to Morgan Stanley Capital Partners in 2018.
"Introducing private equity sponsorship into our business changed a bunch of things for the better. The No. 1 impact it had on Comar was my ability to go out and recruit talent. So now as a private equity-funded business, where we could offer equity, where we had a private equity sponsor that had a great reputation in the plastics business," said Ruggieri, who stayed on as CEO of the company before transitioning to chairman in 2022.
"It changed our ability to go out and recruit top talent. So that was, hands down, the biggest game changer," Ruggieri said.