CaneKast, a Minnesota holding company, acquired Superior Aluminum Castings, Independence, MO, in a private transaction, the third aluminum foundry it has acquired in 2021. “Four years ago, we started acquiring non-ferrous foundries because we believe in local manufacturing,” commented CaneKast owner and CEO Reg Zeller. “We are building a network of facilities that will provide the benefits of a small business yet have state-of-the-art technology typically only found in large conglomerates. Superior is a great fit to help us achieve this vision.”
The value of the purchase was not reported.
The Missouri foundry is a green-sand casting operation producing small-volume (prototypes) as well as large manufacturing runs, for customers in packaging, transportation, auto parts, and general industrial manufacturing, in the Midwest and Southern U.S.
Superior Aluminum’s customers will gain access to the holding company’s additional capacity, heat-treating, machining, permanent mold/gravity-fed die-cast, and rapid prototyping and improved part development.
“We are leveraging Superior’s advanced equipment and expertise pouring aluminum alloys to provide our customers further diversification across facilities,” explained CaneKast president Seth Cutler. “We plan to hire additional employees and start a large-scale training program across our group and update the back-office systems to boost production.”
CaneKast is comprised of Ermak Foundry, in Chaska, MN, a no-bake and green-sand-casting as well as permanent-mold foundry; Patriot Foundry & Castings in Franklin, NH, a specialty producer of nonferrous sand castings; RDS Dock Hardware, also in Franklin, NH, which casts aluminum docks, decks, and bridge hardware. The latter two businesses were acquired in February of this year.
In 2019 the group acquired Northwest Casting Inc., St. Paul, MN, also a green-sand and permanent-mold casting foundry for aluminum parts.
Referring to Superior Aluminum Castings, Cutler said, “…being our fifth acquisition, we have a good understanding of how to quickly integrate the new enterprise, utilizing the best practices from the old and new businesses to make all of them better.”