WESCO Buys Cascade Controls To Build OEM Presence In Pacific Northwest

July 26, 2007
With an eye on the Pacific Northwest’s OEM market, WESCO International Inc., Pittsburgh, acquired Cascade Controls Corp., Tukwila, Wash., in late June. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

With an eye on the Pacific Northwest’s OEM market, WESCO International Inc., Pittsburgh, acquired Cascade Controls Corp., Tukwila, Wash., in late June. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

WESCO already had approximately 30 branches in the Northwest before the deal. Cascade Controls has locations in Tukwila and Spokane, Wash.

Cascade Controls, with approximately 20 employees and annual sales of $11 million, is a well-established automation and controls distributor in the Pacific Northwest that has served machine builders and other end users in Washington, the Idaho panhandle and western Montana for more than 20 years. The company’s three biggest automation suppliers are Siemens, Turck and Banner.

WESCO will operate the company under the Cascade Controls name as a division of WESCO for at least the near- to mid-term. “They have a good name in the end markets and we plan on leveraging off that,” said Van Oss.

“Cascade provides WESCO with additional capabilities to serve our growing customer base of original equipment manufacturers,” said Stephen A. Van Oss, WESCO’s senior vice president and chief financial and administrative officer. “It will really help us in our OEM market initiatives. We have a good business up there already. This will allow us to really penetrate further the OEM base in the Northwest.”

Pat Denny and Michelle Cereghino, the previous owners of Cascade Controls, will continue to run the business. “We’ll look at centering part of our automation efforts around them,” Van Oss said.