One of Europe’s leading mid-market private equity investors, Equistone Partners Europe (“Equistone”), today announced that it has agreed to sell Bulgin, a leading manufacturer of environmentally sealed high-performance engineered solutions, to Infinite Electronics, Inc., a global portfolio of leading in-stock connectivity solution brands.
Both Equistone and Bulgin were advised by Houlihan Lokey’s Industrial Technology team, including a team from Manchester led by Adam Sivner.
Founded in 1923, Bulgin has a century of experience designing, developing and manufacturing harsh environment connectivity solutions for more than 75,000 end-users across a broad range of industries. Its focus on bespoke services and custom capabilities is supported by quick prototyping and a rapid response team.
Since Equistone’s acquisition of the business from Elektron Technology PLC in 2019, Bulgin has grown significantly, opening a new site in Tunisia and new headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, as well as investing in product development and implementing a new data and analytics platform to support sales. Bulgin now has more than 670 distributor locations spanning 60 countries and six continents. The business employs over 680 people across its locations in the UK, North America, Asia-Pacific and North Africa.
Adam Sivner, Managing Director at Houlihan Lokey, said: “Bulgin is a best in class British manufacturer, delivering highly designed and specified components to a global customer base. With Equistone’s support, Bulgin has gone from strength-to-strength, building on its exceptional brand. We thoroughly enjoyed working closely with both Bulgin and Equistone, to find an exciting new home for the business and this transaction marks a strong start to the year for our industrial technology team.”
Paul Harper, Partner at Equistone, said: “We are proud to have worked with John and his team over the last three years to support Bulgin’s continued growth and development of a strongly differentiated market position. The business has an excellent brand and is well-positioned for the future. We wish the team well on the next stage of their journey with Infinite Electronics, Inc., under whose ownership we expect they will continue to thrive in attractive global markets.”
Tristan Manuel, Investment Director at Equistone, added: “Equistone has a strong track record of successful investments within the industrials sector. Over the course of our partnership, Bulgin has transformed their operational infrastructure, enhanced their product offering through R&D and broken ground in a number of new markets.”
John Wilson, Bulgin’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “With Equistone’s support we have achieved strong growth over the last three years and expanded our global reach significantly. Joining Infinite Electronics’ portfolio provides the Bulgin brand with the scale and leverage opportunities required to accelerate access into its largest market in North America. Infinite Electronics and Bulgin share much in common – ambitious global growth plans and customer-centric values. This is an exciting milestone in the Bulgin brand’s journey.”
Bulgin and Equistone were advised by Houlihan Lokey (M&A) and Travers Smith (Legal).
