Britain’s Smiths Group PLC is set to buy Santa Ana-based Integrated Aerospace Inc. for $110 million.
The deal is expected to close in November.
It’s the second sale of an Orange County-based company this month for Integrated owner Brockway Moran & Partners Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based private equity firm.
Brockway also sold Dynamic Cooking Systems Inc. of Huntington Beach to New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel Appliance Holdings Ltd. for about $33 million in early October.
Smiths isn’t expected to shake up Integrated, which makes airplane landing gear and other parts, said Peter Woolfrey, Smiths’ business development director.
“We’ve got no plans to change anything,” he said.
Integrated Chief Executive Mark Silk is set to remain as head of Integrated under Smiths.
Woolfrey cited Integrated’s strong defense business and product development for emerging aircraft, such as the unmanned aerial vehicle, as reasons for buying the company.
“Smiths is going to support and invest in the business,” he said.
Integrated has about 200 workers and 300,000 square feet of space at its Santa Ana headquarters and a plant in Signal Hill. It makes gear primarily for the defense industry.
Integrated’s parts can be found on helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, commercial planes and military aircraft such as United Technologies Corp.’s Black Hawk helicopter and Boeing Co.’s Super Hornet.
One of Integrated’s most recent contract wins is an $18 million order for 950 fixed landing gears for the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.
The work is being done in Santa Ana and is set to be finished by the end of 2006.
Brockway formed Integrated in 1999 by combining four companies: Trig Holding Inc., Derlan Inc., Sun Eight Co. and High Tech West Inc.
Trig and Derlan, which make up Integrated’s systems, or landing gear, unit, were consolidated into Derlan’s Santa Ana facility.
Sun Eight and High Tech, which account for Integrated’s structural, or fuselage, wing and tail division, share High Tech’s Signal Hill headquarters.
Brockway, which typically invests in companies valued up to $200 million, decided the aerospace industry had rebounded enough to sell Integrated, according to managing partner Michael Moran, in a report from mergers and acquisitions tracker The Deal.
The report also said Brockway earned 3.5 times its undisclosed investment in Integrated. Moran couldn’t be reached for comment.
Brockway’s other OC holdings include Santa Ana-based contract electronics maker TTM Technologies Inc., which went public in 2000.
Smiths’ Woolfrey said he became aware of Integrated three years ago.
He visited the company about a year ago when the two were working together on a few military projects.
“It was very clear to me they had a good team of people there,” he said.
The companies also had complementary products, he said.
About six weeks after the visit, Integrated chief Silk told Woolfrey that Brockway was putting the company up for sale.
Smiths, which posted sales of $5 billion for the year ended July 31, said the Integrated acquisition is its seventh in 2004.
Smiths has been expanding in the U.S. aerospace market, Woolfrey said. Smiths’ aerospace unit is based in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The conglomerate also makes medical devices, security systems and hosing and ducting.
The aerospace division accounted for nearly $2 billion in Smiths’ sales.
The company has more than 31,000 workers overall.
