Private equity buys Ace Controls
Blackford Capital, a lower middle market private equity firm, has acquired Ace Controls, a Houston-based company that design and builds industrial control panels.
This acquisition diversifies Blackford’s industrial automation platform, PACIV, to service a broader range of customers. Terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.
Ace Controls is the third acquisition for the PACIV platform since its establishment in June 2023 – Ace Controls brings a new focus on industrial applications in the water and wastewater industry, and also further expands the platform’s control panel capabilities.
Ace Controls has a 95% repeat business rate from its customers, who represent the equipment manufacturing, electrical contracting, and general contracting sectors.
Ace Controls President Agmed Aguirre founded the company in 2005 with a vision to serve the water and wastewater industries by building and distributing high-quality wholesale control panels designed with the end user in mind. The entire management team and all employees will remain with the PACIV platform post-acquisition.
“We are excited to join the PACIV platform and are eager to gain access to new customers, receive additional services, and collaboratively achieve significant growth,” said Aguirre.
Jeff Johnson, managing director and chairman of the board of PACIV, said, “We welcome the Ace Controls team to PACIV, who impressed us with their strong culture of continuous improvement, dedication to cost control, and customer service. We believe that by expanding PACIV’s control panel offerings we can achieve our ’one-stop’ goal for the platform and create a truly synergistic portfolio company.”
The platform is headquartered in ?San Juan, Puerto Rico with offices in Indiana, Pennsylvania, California, Ireland, and now Texas.
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