Grain handling equipment maker Ag Growth of Winnipeg has bought a U.S. manufacturer of livestock gates, panels, stock tanks and feeders on its latest cross-border shopping trip.
Ag Growth Income Fund announced Tuesday that it’s bought Applegate Steel of Saratoga, Ind., for US$3 million. Applegate has posted annual revenues of between US$9 million and $12 million in recent years, Ag Growth said.
Applegate runs factories in Indiana and Iowa, but one of its plants, in Saratoga, is not part of the deal. Ag Growth plans instead to move that work about 11 km southeast to the vacant plant it bought at Union City, Ind., back in November.
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Applegate’s product line “complements certain products manufactured by the fund’s Wheatheart and Edwards divisions and provides the fund with a more substantial footing in the livestock end of the agricultural market,” said Ag Growth CEO Rob Stenson in a release Tuesday.
Wheatheart makes fencing equipment and grain augers at Saskatoon, while Edwards makes grain drying and aeration equipment at Lethbridge and Nobleford, Alta.
Plus, Stenson said, Applegate’s management and workforce will allow Ag Growth to better serve its expanding U.S. markets by transferring some of the work from the fund’s “labour-constrained western Canadian operations” to its Union City site.
Ag Growth’s recent U.S. expansions have included the Union City plant, which it bought vacant for US$850,000; Union Iron, a handling and conveyor equipment company at Decatur, Ill., for US$20.2 million, also in November; and Hansen Manufacturing, maker of the Hi Roller grain conveyor product line at Sioux Falls, S.D., in late 2006 for US$18.5 million.
