Collegeville tube plant sold again, for $200MM

Ametek, the Paoli-based industrial conglomerate, has paid "approximately $200 million" to private equity investor Steven E. Karol's Watermill Group, Lexington, Mass., for Global Tubes, which includes two businesses: Collegeville-based Superior Tube Co. and its 300,000 square foot mill; and Fine Tubes Inc. in Plymouth, England, Watermill says.

Superior and Fine have total sales of $120 million a year, up 16 percent since 2012, when Watermill bought the mills fom owners including descendants of founder Clarence Warden, who started Superior in 1934 as an aircraft tubing  supplier.

At the time of the sale, Superior employed around 250, down from 1,000 in the 1960s, the Times Herald reported. Superior now employs around 225 at Collegeville, and the combined tube business employs around 600 worldwide, Ametek spokesman Kevin Coleman told me.

Watermill says its "strategic transformation" of the mills -- including "streamlined" factory operations, new managers, "upgraded equipment," larger capacity and faster production -- along with the rise in revenues, has "more than doubled" non-financial earnings at the two mills, which make specialized stainless, nickel, titanium and zirconium tubes for the aerospace, nuclear energy, electric generation, and medical markets. 

Ametek, with $4 billion in yearly sales, plans to add the business to its Electromechanical Group.