PPC in DeWitt sold for $515 million to St. Louis' Belden Inc. (original) (raw)
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St. Louis -- A DeWitt business with 774 employees and hundreds of patents has been sold to St. Louis-based Belden Inc., for $515.7 million.
PPC, formerly known as Production Products Company, manufactures components for the cable and telephone industry. Belden is a maker of cable, connectivity and networking products that in recent years has been acquiring companies in related lines of work.
Family owned PPC has 774 employees and is on track for sales of 238millionthisyear.Belden,apubliccompany,isexpectingsalesof238 million this year. Belden, a public company, is expecting sales of 238millionthisyear.Belden,apubliccompany,isexpectingsalesof1.95 billion for the year.
Eric Ehlers, a spokesperson for Belden, said Belden's position as a maker of cables and PPC's as a maker of connectors made the purchase sensible.
“This acquisition is a wonderful example of our business transformation and highlights our strategic focus on building global business platforms with strong financial attributes, serving attractive end markets,” John Stroup, president and CEO of Belden, said in a release.
“PPC provides innovative products that enable our customers to profitably grow their business by delivering higher bandwidth and enhanced services, with fewer service calls. Belden and PPC will provide unique end-to-end solutions for these customers, and I am excited about the opportunity ahead of us.”
Ehlers said a team from Belden and PPC had begun work on integrating the two companies. He said it was too soon to say what would happen to production or jobs.
"We've done a ton of acquisitions," Ehlers said. Sometimes the company becomes re-branded as Belden, but sometimes the existing brand goes on.
He said PPC offers "a lot of skill sets and knowledge," that can help Belden develop products to make high-speed internet and other sorts of applications faster.
"They are already heavily involved in that," Ehlers said of PPC. Last year, PPC announced that it had been awarded 36 new patents in July, August and September bringing its then-total to more than 446 patents around the world.
According to its web site, PPC saw 10-fold growth from 1992 to 2000. The web site also recounts are the company was started by John Mezzalingua with a single drill press in his in-laws basement during World War II.
In February, PPC was listed among a dozen innovative manufactures in Central New York in The Post-Standard's Progress edition.
Contact Charles McChesney at cmcchesney@syracuse.com.
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