March 26, 2019 Updated 3/26/2019
Tank Holding Corp. Olympus Partners has taken over ownership of Tank Holding Corp., the largest rotational molder in North America.
Stamford, Conn.-based private equity firm Olympus Partners has acquired Tank Holding Corp., the rotational molder of tanks, for the second time in a decade.
Olmpus is buying North America’s largest rotomolder back from Leonard Green & Partners LP.
Leonard Green, a Los Angeles private equity firm, bought Tank Holding from Olympus in 2012. Olympus formed Tank Molding with its management team in 2008 by merging two major tank rotomolders, Norwesco Inc. and Snyder Industries Inc. Olympus made other deals to add tanks, material handling products and other rotomolded offerings, and today Tank Holding is by far the largest rotomolder in North America. Plastics News most recent ranking lists Tank Holding with annual sales of $250 million, from 22 factories.
It’s unusual for a private equity firm to sell a company, then buy it back, but Manu Bettegowda, an Olympus partner, said: “It happens more often than you would think. It’s really more of a function of the team and the business.”
One example in the plastics industry is rigid packaging distributor TricorBraun Holdings Inc., which was purchased by AEA Investors LP in 2016 from CHS Capital. The two firms had exchanged ownership in 2004, when AEA originally bought TricorBraun from CHS, then in 2006, CHS reacquired the company from AEA.
Bettegowda said the Tank Holding management team “has built a remarkable business with impressive and consistent performance.”
Greg Wade, Tank Holdings’ president and CEO, said management is excited about partnering again with Olympus.
“They have a great understanding of our business, and we look forward to working with them in the execution of our many growth initiatives,” Wade said.
Bettegowda said the management team has “built a really nice business and it’s always performed, and we think there’s opportunities to grow the business and expand the product offering.”
He said Olympus and Tank Holding always looks for acquisitions.
“I think we would continue to look for acquisitions where it makes sense, and especially where it would broaden the product offering of the company, it would definitely be of interest to us,” he said.
One area would be a deal to get access to new rotomolding technology, or other manufacturing processes that would meet some of the needs of Tank Holdings’ customers base, Bettegowda said.
Olympus Partners, founded in 1988, focuses on providing equity capital for middle-market management buyouts and for companies that need capital for expansion. Olympus bills itself as an active, long-term investor. The firm manages more than $8.5 billion, mainly on behalf of corporate pension funds, endowment funds and state-sponsored retirement programs.
Terms of the sale were not released. But in February, Bloomberg reported Leonard Green & Partners was considering an auction sale for Tank Holding. Citing people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported Leonard Green could value Tank Holding at about $1 billion. Leonard Green paid about $830 million to buy the business from Olympus in 2012, Bloomberg said, again citing unnamed sources.
Bettegowda confirmed it was an auction transaction, but declined to comment on the Bloomberg-reported numbers.
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