Infrastructure manager I Squared Capital is acquiring aerospace components manufacturer Orizon Aerostructures for an undisclosed sum.
I Squared said it is partnering with Orizon’s founders, Charlie and Henry Newell, who will continue to lead the firm and serve on its board of directors alongside senior management, who are reinvesting a meaningful equity stake in the business.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, Orizon manufactures large, complex structural components and subassemblies for commercial aviation, defence and space applications, and is one of North America’s largest independent aerostructures manufacturers.
Gautam Bhandari, managing partner and CIO at I Squared Capital, said: “Expanding aircraft production requires investment in essential industrial infrastructure throughout the supply chain. Orizon provides a critical part of that infrastructure: highly specialised production capacity deeply embedded in aircraft programmes that span decades.
”Its exclusive, life-of-programme contracts, cost pass-through provisions and demanding qualification requirements combine long-term customer relationships with significant barriers to entry – the attributes we seek as infrastructure investors. With aircraft order books stretching over a decade into the future, expanding qualified manufacturing capacity is essential to ramping up aircraft deliveries.”
Charlie Newell, co-founder and CEO at Orizon, and Henry Newell, co-founder and president at Orizon, said: “Our goal with Orizon was to build something unique. For us, that meant an organically grown, vertically integrated business which could machine, process and assemble the industry’s most complex parts and subassemblies with advanced manufacturing technology to solve our customers’ biggest problems.
“While our equipment and facilities are new and built from the ground up, we have been on a 30-year journey to work with the industry’s best people, supply-chain partners and customers. The result has been mission-critical plants with long-term contracts where we lead with disruptive, award-winning technologies that always place quality first.”
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