Rockwood Heats Up With Camfire –

Who says debt financing is hard to come by?

New York-based Rockwood Equity Partners LLC recently completed a fully leveraged acquisition of Camfire Inc.’s military heater division. The senior debt was provided by Huntington National Bank, which recently agreed to a revised credit agreement with Rockwood. Terms of the deal were unavailable at press time.

“We had plenty of capital available after renegotiating the credit agreement, and we had anticipated small add-ons like this as part of that,” explained Brett Keith, a principal with Rockwood.

The Camfire deal represents the second time in 12 months that Rockwood has completed an add-on acquisition for Hunter Manufacturing Co., a military equipment platform created by Rockwood. Hunter specializes in NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) air filtration systems and mobile heaters, but was missing the type of rugged portable space heaters that Camfire has been offering since 1979.

“We looked at this as a way to fill the one obvious gap in our product line,” Keith said. “You either have to build your way in or buy your way in, so we contacted [Camfire] and [it] was amenable to the transfer.”

As part of the transaction, Rockwood will fold all of the acquired Canada-based manufacturing assets into an existing Cleveland-based manufacturing facility. Only a handful of senior managers will be making the trip.

Hunter has an annual run rate of approximately $50 million, and Keith said the Camfire acquisition should add a few million dollars to that total. Rockwood, formed in late 1999, raises capital on a deal-by-deal basis from a pool of institutional investors. It has no current plans to raise a fund. The last time it completed an add-on for Hunter was 12 months ago, when it acquired the heater division of Global Thermoelectric Inc.

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