Southwire Co., Carrollton, Ga., has agreed to purchase certain assets of American Insulated Wire Corp. (AIW), a subsidiary of Leviton Manufacturing Co. Inc., Melville, N.Y., that's well known in the electrical industry as a manufacturer of portable cord, cordsets, electronic wire and cable and other cabling products. Last week's NAED Western Conference in San Diego was buzzing with rumors of the acquisition.
Southwire will acquire the AIW brands and two manufacturing facilities in Douglas, Ga., and Coffeyville, Kan., both of which produce a variety of electrical wire and cable products for the commercial, industrial, retail and OEM markets. The purchase of AIW, which is now based in Mansfield, Mass., but for years was headquartered in Pawtucket, R.I., is expected to close by the end of February.
“Acquiring AIW will allow us to diversify our product offering while continuing to strengthen our position in our core copper building wire business,” said Stuart Thorn, Southwire CEO.
Leviton acquired AIW in 1936. Donald J. Hendler, Leviton President and CEO, said the company no longer fit into Leviton's shift toward “more value-added systems and solutions.”
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.