Kaman Industrial Technologies (KIT), Bloomfield, Conn., continued its quest to offer a more complete package of products and services to the industrial market with the acquisition, announced last week, of the assets of Zeller Corp., a distributor based in Rochester, N.Y.
Zeller began life as a broad-line electrical distributor, but expanded to embrace a more comprehensive offering of industrial services over the years. In addition to Zeller Electric it has four other business units — Zynergy Solutions (machine vision and automated inspection systems), VSG Enviromation (process control, industrial water and wastewater), WAJA Associates (power distribution and monitoring) and RC Controls (motion control consulting).
Zeller is a premier Schneider Electric distribution partner, and other lines include Kollmorgen, Phoenix Contact, Rittal and Sick. Zeller employs 240 people and has operations in Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo, N.Y.; Foxboro, Mass.; and Winston-Salem, N.C. Zeller expects to do roughly $80 million in sales this year.
KIT is a unit of Kaman Corp., a diversified company with $1.5 billion in 2011 sales and a separate unit doing manufacturing and subcontracting in the aerospace market. Kaman entered the industrial distribution business in 1971 and developed primarily in the bearings and transmission products space, but made large waves in the electrical automation market two years ago when it acquired motion control giant Minarik, Glendale, Calif.
The addition of Zeller brings substantial technical expertise in areas Kaman was seeking to expand, Steve Smidler, president of KIT, told Electrical Marketing. With about 60 engineers on staff, Zeller’s services unit, which Smidler said accounts for about 60% of its business, offers technical services such as PLC and automation programming.
“We like what Zeller brings us from a services perspective,” Smidler said. “It’s very complementary to our base KIT MRO strategy. A lot of our customers are looking for productivity and cost savings from a manufacturing-plant perspective, and to a large degree we were limited in and around the mechanical side, a little on the motors, DC and AC drives, but we were not in any kind of power distribution and advanced control and even somewhat limited in what we offered for automation. So Zeller, especially the Zeller services, are going to help us with many of our core KIT customers, offering a more comprehensive total-machine approach to the mechanical, fluid power and electrical solutions.”
Kaman is trying to build out those three primary platforms, Smidler said. To what he called Kaman’s “classic” markets — bearings, power transmission and plant-based MRO supplies — the company has been adding fluid power and electrical automation and motion control.
One recent KIT acquisition of interest was last year’s purchase of Catching Fluid Power, Bolingbrook, Ill. As part of that deal, KIT was able to secure nationwide reseller authorization from Parker-Hannifin, a fluid power manufacturer whose distribution exclusivity policies might look familiar to Allen-Bradley distributors in the electrical market. Asked whether KIT might pursue a similar agreement with Schneider Electric with the addition of Zeller, Smidler said that’s not really the plan.
“We’ll consolidate lines where it makes sense, but many of these manufacturers tend to have limited trading areas for their authorized distributors,” he said. “We pride ourselves on playing by the rules. The reason is, we like those rules. I look at it as being advantageous if the suppliers have very focused, disciplined distribution in defined areas. It makes it easier for us to justify the technical resources to go get them designed in.”
Zeller’s management team and employees will continue with Zeller under Kaman’s ownership. “We are also very pleased to have Gary Haseley staying with Kaman and joining our KIT executive management team as Zeller’s vice president and general manager, reporting to me,” Smidler said in a Kaman release announcing the Zeller acquisition. “Zeller complements and strengthens our recent acquisitions of Minarik, Target Electronic Supply and Automation Technology and is illustrative of our overall expansion strategy to further increase our electrical, automation and motion control footprint.”
Kaman has been an aggressive acquirer throughout its 67-year history, moving in and out of various lines of business from helicopters to musical instruments — its founder, Charles Kaman, was one of the key inventors of modern helicopter technology as well as the Ovation round-back guitar.