Chi. Firm To Shop Global Plastics Platform

Target: Citadel Plastics Holdings Inc.

Seller: Wind Point Partners

Financial Adviser: Seller: KeyBanc Capital Markets

Wind Point Partners has tapped KeyBanc Capital Markets to shop Citadel Plastics Holdings Inc., a plastics business it’s been building since 2007, a source who has seen marketing materials provided by KeyBanc told Buyouts.

The company makes compounded grades of nylon, polycarbonate, polyethylene and other products used in the power tool, lawn and garden, automotive and other markets. Based outside of Philadelphia, the company has 12 manufacturing locations managed through subsidiaries in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, according to the company’s Web site. It generates “a few hundred million” dollars in revenue, according to the source.

Chicago-based Wind Point launched Citadel Plastics in partnership with Mike Fitzpatrick, a former president and COO of Rohm & Haas, a specialty materials company that he worked at for 30 years, according to Wind Point’s Web site. Since then, the company has been on a perpetual buying spree.

Citadel Plastics and its subsidiaries have completed six acquisitions. Its first came in March 2007, when it bought The Matrixx Group Inc. in Evansville, Ind. Most recently, in July, it bought QTR Inc., another resin provider based in Evansville. QTR alone employs between 40 and 50 workers and generates annual sales of about $15 million, according to a July 19 report on the QTR acquisition in trade publication Plastics News. In April 2009, Citadel expanded into fast-growing Brazil, buying operations owned in that country from Meridian Automotive Systems Inc.

Wind Point has sold at least three other companies so far this year, most recently in August when it divested Marshfield DoorSystems Inc., a Marshfield, Wis.-based maker of commercial wood doors and door components. The buyer was Masonite Worldwide. In July it sold U.S. Security Associates, a security services provider it bought back in 1999 for $170 million, as Buyouts previously reported.

Wind Point has been fairly active on the buy-side this year as well, making at least three acquisitions, according to Capital IQ.

The firm has raised more than $2.8 billion in commitments since its founding in 1984, and is currently investing from its seventh fund, a $915 million pool of capital it closed in 2009. The firm typically invests between $20 million and $120 million in companies in business services, consumer products, health care, industrial products, and media and communications companies based in the United States.

Executives at Wind Point and Citadel did not return calls seeking comment.