I&I Sling / Slingmax Join Forces with Yale Cordage
River Associates Investments, L.P. (“River Associates”), a longstanding lower middle market private equity firm based in Chattanooga, TN, announced the acquisition of I&I Sling, Inc and Slingmax, Inc. (“I&I / Slingmax”). This acquisition, in addition to River’s purchase of Yale Cordage in 2020, solidifies the combined businesses as an industry leader of innovative custom solutions in synthetic ropes and heavy lift slings serving the Utility/Electric, Energy/Off-shore, Infrastructure/Construction, Arborist, Inland Marine and Commercial Marine industries.
Each company will continue to operate autonomously delivering the same level of commitment of relentless focus on serving customers, manufacturing in America, and driving innovation through custom engineered solutions across all 50 states, Canada, and other countries.
Nino M. Granatiero, Yale Cordage CEO, said “Yale Cordage is in a growth phase, with a host of new opportunities and new direction, making this an exciting time as we approach our 75th year.” Nino added, “Together with I&I Sling and Slingmax we now have over 230 dedicated team members focused on providing a high level of customer delivery performance with industry-leading quality.”
Scott St. Germain, CEO of I&I / Slingmax added, “Joining forces with Yale expands our breadth of synthetic rope and roundsling products and capabilities. I’m confident I&I customers and Slingmax Dealers will benefit greatly from this merger and it’s a win-win for our combined employee force as well.” Scott continued in saying, “This new venture strengthens our engineering efforts to accelerate new product development and improve upon our current line of exclusive rigging solutions, which have enhanced customer safety and improved job site efficiencies for decades across the globe. Now with the synergy of Yale Cordage working alongside us, there’s no limit to what our combined companies can accomplish together. We are very excited!”
“From a product perspective, I&I Sling has – patented Slingmax® Twin Path® High Performance Synthetic Roundslings; Smart Sling® Technology, Cornermax® cut protection, Equalizer Blocks, Roundsling production machines – and many more industry-leading heavy lift products”, said Granatiero. “Yale Cordage has – patents on Fortis® and Zipgrips® – offers traditional and high-performance single braid and double braid synthetic ropes and its proprietary parallel core and cable grip products creating an industry leading portfolio of combined solutions.”
Scott St. Germain will continue to serve as CEO of I&I / Slingmax and the company will remain operating in its current headquarters in Aston, PA. “Our combined teams are spread out across seven US states in eight locations including major operations in Maine, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.” added Scott. We are determined to provide the same level of commitment to our valued customers as we have for more than 58 years.” Yale Cordage will continue serving its customers with no changes.
River Associates and the management teams at Yale Cordage and I&I / Slingmax continue to seek complementary strategic acquisition partners for the company.
About Yale Cordage:
Founded in 1950, Yale Cordage is a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance synthetic rope and rope systems for critical, high cost-of-failure applications. Based in Saco, Maine, Yale Cordage has an additional manufacturing facility in North Carolina. Yale produces a wide range of specialty ropes for key industries such as: heavy lift, specialty industrial, utility, arborist, life safety, and oceanographic / marine. We utilize proprietary equipment and engineering ingenuity to design and manufacture synthetic rope and rope systems for our premier distributors and resellers located across all 50 states and multiple international markets. For more information visit www.yalecordage.com
About I&I Sling Inc / Slingmax, Inc:
I&I Sling, Inc. based in Aston, PA is a premium manufacturer of custom lifting slings, and supplier of rigging hardware, hoists, and provides testing, engineering, repair, and inspection services at all six full-service locations, servicing the entire east coast. For further information visit www.iandisling.com
Slingmax, Inc. is recognized worldwide for local service, quality and innovative solutions for the heavy lift and material handling market supplying the most advanced high performance synthetic slings and multi-part wire rope slings on the market today. The Slingmax organization consists of 37 independent companies in 12 countries, each exclusively licensed, trained and certified to manufacture, repair and test Slingmax® products. For additional information visit www.slingmax.com
About River Associates:
River Associates is a private equity firm based in Chattanooga, TN, that focuses exclusively on investing in the lower middle-market and has served as a financial sponsor partner for management teams for over 30 years. Target businesses can be privately held, private equity-backed, or divestitures from larger companies. River Associates is opportunistic as to industry and has invested in numerous manufacturers, high margin distributors, industrial service providers and business service companies. The firm targets U.S. & Canadian companies typically with EBITDA in the $3-15 million range. Since its founding in 1989, River Associates has initiated more than 100 transactions, many of which have been strategic add-on acquisitions to platform companies. For more information visit www.riverassociates.com
