New Page Capital, a Greensboro-based private equity firm formed in 2013 to purchase and grow privately held companies in the Triad, has acquired Engineered Steel Products, a Randolph County structural steel manufacturing company.

The purchase is the first major investment deal for New Page Capital, which plans to invest in local companies that have revenues ranging between $5 million $35 million, stable cash flow and sustainable competitive positions.

Under the ownership of New Page Capital, Sophia-based Engineered Steel Products co-founders Rob Braswell and Richard Flournoy continue to hold executive roles. Meanwhile, Rick Ramsey, operating partner with New Page Capital, is now the president of Engineered Steel Products.

Braswell, former president of Engineered Steel Products, said New Page Capital has a high-quality team.

"Rick and his colleagues have strong local ties and the resources and expertise to enhance our future success," he said.
Adam Duggins, managing partner for New Page Capital and one of the Business Journal's 40 Leaders Under Forty honorees for 2015, is serving as vice president of Engineered Steel Products. He explained that the deal closed in November, but that the company had delayed announcing the acquisition until its website was completed.

Duggins said New Page Capital focuses on buying and growing companies that value their employees and want to keep them long-term. The firm is seeking to grow Engineered Steel Products' more than 30-person work force with positions for a project manager and a shop foreman, along with other jobs, he said.

Duggins returned to Greensboro after working for Bain and Co. and other companies for 15 years. The Greensboro native attended Page High School and graduated from The College of William and Mary before meeting Ramsey at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.

Duggins said he and Ramsey could have started the business in larger cities, such as Raleigh, Charlotte or Richmond, Va., but chose the Triad because of its high number of aging business owners who don't have succession plans in place.

And he knew anecdotally that many of his peers weren't coming back to the Triad. Duggins left Greensboro never intending to come back.

But now that he's married, with three boys and another child on the way, he wanted to returned to the family-oriented community of Greensboro.

"You have that quality of life," Duggins said. "Downtown today compared to what it was when I left is not the same place."
Duggins hopes to attract other talented young professionals to the Triad to one day potentially run the companies that New Page acquires.

"They don't have to be from Greensboro," he said. "Maybe they see North Carolina and the Triad as a place to raise a young family."

 

Source : http://www.bizjournals.com/

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