Wynnchurch Capital acquires hardscape products maker Alliance

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Wynnchurch Capital, Alliance Designer Products, Canada, private equity, merger, M&A, Tutino family
Morty White, Managing Director, Wynnchurch Capital
  • Firm’s 12th platform investment in Canada
  • Purchases Alliance Designer, maker of specialty sand
  • Company plans push in North America, Europe

Wynnchurch Capital has closed its 12th platform investment in Canada, buying a maker of products used in home and commercial hardscaping projects.

The mid-market private equity firm said today it acquired Alliance Designer Products, a Mirabel, Québec, maker of polymeric sand and installation products sold mainly to contractors, dealers and manufacturers.

Terms weren’t disclosed. The seller was the Tutino family, including Alliance President George Tutino and Senior Vice President Jack Tutino, brothers who founded the business in 2003.

The Tutinos will stay in their management roles and continue to hold a stake.

Alliance produces an array of hardscape products, including its flagship line, G2 polymeric sand, which it says reduces the maintenance of projects and guards against erosion and pests. It currently sells in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

Alliance’s market focus and strategy proved a draw for Wynnchurch, which will support the company’s “next stage of growth,” Managing Director Morty White told Buyouts.

Much of the expansion is expected to be organic in nature, linked to further penetration of customer markets in North America and Europe, White said.

He said a key to Alliance’s growth is increasing adoption of polymeric sand as a preferred solution in hardscaping projects, along with related accessories.

Wynnchurch invested in Alliance through Wynnchurch Capital Partners IV, which raised $1.3 billion in 2014.

The investment caps a recent spate of Canadian deals by Wynnchurch. Last August, the firm acquired Logistik Unicorp, a Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec, provider of managed clothing services and uniform solutions. The sellers were Argosy Partners’ Shotgun Fund and Clearspring Capital Partners.

Shortly thereafter, Wynnchurch bought select assets of the Toronto polyethylene pipe business of Finland’s Uponor, later renamed Infra Pipe Solutions.

And in December, Wynnchurch acquired Buchanan Rubber, a Toronto distributor of industrial hoses, couplings and sheet rubber. Buchanan was rolled into the firm’s industrial distribution platform, rebranded in April as Midland Industries.

Alliance is Wynnchurch’s ninth Canadian investment since 2009, when the Chicago firm opened an office in Toronto led by Montréal-born White. To date, Wynnchurch has made 12 platform investments in Canada.

Canadian PE activity in 2018

Deal values in Canada’s private equity market set a record in 2018, Refinitiv reported this year.

Investment activity reflected values of C$37 billion ($28 billion) in total at the end of December, up 31 percent from 2017 and surpassing the prior record of C$34 billion set in 2007.

Transaction volumes, however, were down 10 percent year over year.