Tank Components buys The Turning Center

By 2004, Tank Components had expended its resources. To keep growing, its owners sold to Ohio-based L.J. Star Inc., allowing it to maintain local operations and to draw from L.J. Star’s deep pockets for continued expansion.

The result for Tank Components has been a facility move, the doubling of its staff to 20 people, a 60 percent boost in revenues and a local acquisition, executed March 31.

Tank Components, 4520 W. Kearney St., acquired fellow steel components manufacturer The Turning Center LLC, 182 Whiterock Lane in Republic, for an undisclosed amount. The Kingsley Group, the business consultation and merger and acquisition arm of Business Brokers Unlimited, brokered the deal.

Similar to Tank Components, The Turning Center had grown around 20 percent each year since its inception in 2001. Its expansion took it from an in-home, two-person operation co-founded by Kris Cook and David Fender to an eight-person operation in a 4,600-square-foot commercial space. The revenues of both companies were undisclosed.

Cook said The Turning Center had hit its ceiling.

“We were looking at going through another growing pain that I didn’t want to go through alone,” he said.

Cook said the deal would give him and his associates the resources they need to continue their growth. He didn’t know how the acquisition would affect The Turning Center exactly, but he said relocating to Tank Components’ building is a possibility. Fender chose not to stay with The Turning Center following the sale.

The Turning Center, which has kept its name, will likely get new equipment in the deal, though that may not happen until 2007, according to Tank Components President Dale Sandy.

The first order of business will be organizing The Turning Center’s paperwork system and updating its communications infrastructure. Sandy said implementing a new paperwork system to mirror that of Tank Components’ would increase efficiency without much expense.

Tank Components accounted for 70 percent of The Turning Center’s business, so it made sense to both parties to make the deal.

Sandy said that controlling how The Turning Center works should give Tank Components 30 percent savings on the fittings it was buying from The Turning Center.

“We have been very close to them throughout the years,” Sandy said. “We were receiving shipments from them every day and working really close with them. (We’re) one happy family now.”

Sandy said the world of steel components manufacturing is tight knit – a place where competitors are also customers because it’s often cost-effective to specialize in a niche of component manufacturing.

Tank Components, for example, buys already formed stainless-steel bars and uses computers to machine the bars into parts that it sells to tank assembly companies. The tanks are eventually used in endeavors such as pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Paul Mueller Co., Watson Metal Masters and Stainless Technology were shared customers for Tank Components and The Turning Center. Even shared competitors such as Central States Industrial Equipment & Service and Holloway Machine Co. are customers at times, too, Sandy said.

Tank Components was formed in 2000 by six people who left Precision Stainless Inc. before ITT Industries acquired it.[[In-content Ad]]