Spartech is a leading custom manufacturer of specialized acrylics and other engineered extruded plastics used in a variety of applications and end markets including healthcare, aerospace and defense, industrial, automotive, consumer goods, and packaging. Through its network of 14 manufacturing plants and a unique innovation center, Spartech provides acrylic products, plastic sheet and rollstock, specialty film laminates, and packaging solutions to over 1,000 customers in North America, many of whom have partnered with Spartech for decades.
Spartech
Company Overview
Spartech has a long history of providing customers with innovative material science formulations and engineered solutions. The company’s breadth of highly technical manufacturing capabilities utilizes multiple plastic resin types and manufacturing processes including acrylic cell casting, stretching, multilayer extrusion, blow film, and thermoforming.
Deal Background
During Nautic’s partnership with Spartech, we worked closely with management to prioritize and execute on a number of operational improvements to drive margin expansion, while also realigning the sales organization by end market to drive organic growth and building a strong pipeline of add-on acquisitions for the platform.
The company was sold to The Jordan Company in 2021.
Nautic Value-Add
Prior to Nautic’s investment, Spartech was a division of a publicly traded specialty materials business that was carved out to a private equity sponsor in 2017. While the management team (though the CEO was remaining with the prior sponsor after Nautic’s 2019 acquisition) and the company’s engineered solutions were strong and strides had been made to improve the operations of the company, margins remained suboptimal and revenue was not growing.
Nautic, with Operating Advisor John Manzi as Executive Chairman, supported Spartech’s management team on a number of initiatives that ultimately led to exit multiple expansion over an 18 month hold period. The salesforce was realigned with team leaders hired by end market, returning the company to positive organic revenue growth, an accretive add-on acquisition was completed to prove out the platform as a consolidator (with Nautic building a deep and actionable further M&A pipeline), and through operational initiatives and operating leverage EBITDA margins nearly doubled.
Certain statements about Nautic made by portfolio company executives herein are intended to illustrate Nautic’s business relationship with such persons, including with respect to Nautic’s facilities as a business partner, rather than Nautic’s capabilities or expertise with respect to investment advisory services. Portfolio company executives were not compensated in connection with their participation, although they generally receive compensation and investment opportunities in connection with their portfolio company roles, and in certain cases are also owners of portfolio company securities and/or investors in Nautic-sponsored vehicles. Such compensation and investments subject participants to potential conflicts of interest in making the statements herein.