Sandbrook Capital has teamed up with Blackstone’s credit and insurance arm to acquire US electric grid infrastructure services firm United Utility Services from Bernhard Capital Partners (BCP).
United Utility offers a full range of outsourced engineering, design, testing, maintenance and construction services to investor-owned untilities and municipalities. BCP formed the company through a series of acquisitions.
Colt Moedl, CEO of United Utility, said: ”Our team has spent the last several years building United Utility into an integrated platform that our utility partners can trust for their most essential grid projects.
“Sandbrook understands both the urgency and complexity of modernising North America’s electric infrastructure. Their long-term approach and deep experience in power markets will help us scale our capabilities, invest further in our people, fleet and technology, and continue to deliver safe, high-quality work for our customers as they harden their networks against storms, wildfires and growing load.”
Alfredo Marti, co-founder and partner at Sandbrook Capital, said: ”Reliable, resilient electricity networks are the backbone of the energy economy. United Utility sits at the intersection of several powerful trends we care deeply about: aging infrastructure, rising power demand from electrification and data centres and the need to protect communities from the rising costs of increasingly frequent extreme weather.
“We believe Colt and the broader United Utility team have built a best-in-class, customer-first organisation with an exceptional safety culture and track record on large, multi-year resiliency programmes. We are excited to support them as they deepen relationships with existing customers, expand into new geographies and play an ever-increasing role in strengthening the grid.”
Mark Spender, partner at Bernhard Capital Partners, said: ”Since our initial investment, United Utility has grown from an acquired collection of regional businesses into a scaled national platform and a trusted partner to many of the leading utilities in North America.
“We are proud of what we and management have accomplished, as it reflects BCP’s disciplined strategy of acquiring and integrating high-quality regional providers to support utilities’ evolving needs and long-term grid investment priorities.”
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