Varco International Acquires Texas Firm for $30 Million

Varco International Inc. announced Tuesday that it has acquired the Martin-Decker division of Houston-based Cooper Industries Inc. for $30 million in cash.

Martin Decker, a Cedar Park, Tex., company with annual sales of roughly $25 million, manufactures instruments, measurement and monitoring devices, and pipe-handling equipment for the oil industry and other heavy industries. The sale includes manufacturing facilities in Houston and Marshall, Tex.

Varco, headquartered in Orange, makes tools and equipment for the petroleum industry. The company had sales of $87 million last year. Varco said it will borrow about $12 million to acquire Martin Decker.

This is the second acquisition for Varco since 1988, when it acquired the Bryon Jackson Machinery division of Baker Hughes Inc. in Houston for $35 million. Bryon Jackson is the world’s largest maker of hoisting tools used in drilling rigs.

“There’s a strong movement among oil companies to replenish their oil reserves, and in order to do this they have to increase their drilling operations,” said Walter B. Reinhold, Varco’s chairman and chief executive.

He added that offshore and onshore oil and natural gas drilling activities have increased worldwide.

“The entire oil service industry (is) beginning to show signs of growing and we are seeing demand for oil rigs going up right now,” Reinhold said. He adding that there are no plans to change the management team at Martin-Decker.

The sale came one day after Cooper Industries acquired Allen-Bradley Co., a Milwaukee-based maker of industrial air-powered tools, from Rockwell International Corp. for an undisclosed sum.

A Cooper Industries spokeswoman said money from the sale of Martin-Decker will go towards reducing the company’s $1.1-billion debt, which came largely from Cooper’s acquisitions in 1989 of Champion Spark Plug Co. in Toledo, Ohio, and Cameron Iron Works Inc. of Houston.

“Martin-Decker serves the new rig construction and industrial market, while most Cooper businesses serve the transmission and production end of the oil and gas business,” said Ellen H. Myers, the Cooper spokeswoman. “It is a relatively small business, and it does not fit our oil and gas equipment business.”

Cooper Industries is a manufacturer of petroleum and industrial equipment and electrical power machines. It had 1989 revenue of $5.1 billion.