Ohio plastic matting, sheeting supplier ProFusion treads into new ownership

Biding time through the COVID-fueled manufacturing downturn may be the final growing pain for ProFusion Industries, a Fairlawn, Ohio-based company that has spent the last several years securing its footing as a free-standing operation.

ProFusion makes vinyl flooring and step treads for buses and transit systems, industrial matting products, and thermoplastic sheeting and films that are used in a variety of applications.

The product line originally was part of B.F. Goodrich Co., but it has changed hands three times over its 70-year history, most recently falling into the grasp of "a combination/partnership between management and private investors in Texas," according to CEO Alex Williamson.

Terms of the June acquisition were not disclosed.

"This is a group of private investors that knew the business though some other transactions, knew [former owner] Peak Rock Capital and felt the time was right to do this deal now," Williamson said.

Peak Rock, an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm, formed ProFusion shortly after its 2014 acquisition of RJF International Corp., a fabricated polymers company started by late B.F. Goodrich Co. employee Richard Fasenmyer. Williamson said Peak Rock carved RJF International into two businesses: ProFusion, on the industrial products side, and Koroseal Interior Products, which is "more of a pure play on the commercial wall covering side."

In late 2016, Peak Rock sold Koroseal to Sangetsu USA Inc., a subsidiary of Sangetsu Corp. of Japan. Less than two years later, it recruited Williamson, a Myers Industries executive and 25-year industrial manufacturing veteran, to propel ProFusion forward.

Williamson said "substantial operational improvements" aimed at increasing efficiency and safety at the company's Marietta manufacturing plant was one of two big initiatives his team undertook.

"There were some capital upgrades that we made that allowed us to run the equipment more efficiently, but there were also cultural elements to that, challenging paradigms, particularly in terms of, 'This is the way we've always done things,'" he said.

The other big initiative involved market diversification. ProFusion focused on diving deeper into existing markets while also expanding into new markets.

Williams said the tent and awning market is an example of the latter. The company now supplies a film used in tenting fabrics. It also "re-entered" the general trade matting market, he said, where ProFusion manufactures safety mats and anti-fatigue mats for retail and manufacturing applications.

"All of these tend to be niche markets," Williamson said. "Historically, the business had been fairly customer focused, and we're creating a bit more of a market focus, so there are new opportunities that we were able to take advantage of because of more expansive commercial efforts in the field."

The changes began to pay off, just before the pandemic reared its disruptive head. While Williamson declined to provide specific revenue figures, he said the company saw double-digit gains in the first quarter of 2020 over the same period last year.

"That was really the outcome of the hard work we did in 2019 to improve our operational efficiencies and also plant a lot of seeds on the commercial front with respect to diversifying our business."

Megan Kessler, vice president of finance at ProFusion, said the company's June sale itself is another indicator that "the key initiatives the team is working on" are moving it in the right direction.

"We have some exciting new projects in the pipeline on the sales side and the operation side," she said, "and we are re-energized with this new transaction in place to work on those projects."

Pre-COVID-19, ProFusion had roughly 150 employees. Williamson said some of those jobs have been temporarily furloughed as the company, like so many of its peers, has had to "pare capacity to demand."

But he remains optimistic that once the coronavirus crisis lifts, his team will be able to pick up where it left off.

"We have some strong ambitions for the future," Williamson said. "We've continued to diversify our business throughout this period, because although this is a tough time, we also view it as an opportunity to level set ourselves so when the base business recovers, we are that much stronger coming out of this."