Anaheim-Based Unique Buys Santa Ana Company
Unique Investment Corp., an Anaheim-based investment group that has been building a consortium of manufacturing companies over the past five years, has acquired a Santa Ana electronics firm, boosting its holdings to eight companies with more than $125 million a year in sales.
The purchase of Cal Quality Electronics Inc., a $24-million-a-year contract manufacturer of electrical products, completes the initial stage of Unique’s plan to form a loose confederation of contract manufacturers that together “can build whatever our customers need,” said Daniel Lubeck, a co-founder and managing director of Unique.
A contract manufacturer makes products for clients that develop goods but choose not to operate their own factories.
Cal Quality, which has a 50,000-square-foot facility in Santa Ana, has 215 employees and customers throughout the electronic, computer, medical, communications and industrial control industries.
Terms of the privately financed deal were not disclosed. Lubeck said that Unique finances its deals with a combination of private investment money and institutional borrowings. An acquired company’s management retains an interest in the company as part of the deal, Lubeck said.
Unique was started in 1993 by Lubeck, 36, a merger and acquisitions attorney; manufacturing operations specialist Scott Hartman, 35; and sales and marketing executive John Makoff, 35. The three men, all managing directors of the company, were later joined by Joseph G. Phillips, 28, a certified public accountant and principal in the firm.
The men envisioned developing a group of companies “with nice track records in the basic industries but with significant unrealized potential,” Lubeck said.
Unique’s job--besides adding investment capital--”is to make sure that we find companies with managers whose own skills and goals align with our goals,” Lubeck said. “Then the managers are working for themselves. We try to find companies that are doing things pretty much the way we think they ought to be done.”
Other firms in the Unique group:
* Performance Powder Inc., a 17-employee business in Orange that applies powder coatings to industrial metals--a process that replaces painting. The 4-year-old company has grown from $300,000 in sales in 1996, the year Unique acquired it, to about $800,000 now, according to the investment firm.
* Unique Manufacturing Corp., an Anaheim sheet metal fabrication and machining business with 62 employees. The 11-year-old firm’s customers include Boeing Co. and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Sales reportedly have doubled to $6 million since the company, formerly Fab Sheet Metal Inc., was purchased by Unique Investment in 1996.
* Master-Sort Inc., a 17-year-old bulk mail services company in Santa Ana. Master-Sort has 150 employees and about $9 million in annual sales, up from $3 million when it was acquired in 1994, according to Unique.
* Reliable Mail Management Inc., a Santa Ana provider of mail-related services that was spun off from Master-Sort in 1995. The company employs 15 and has annual sales of $500,000.
* Gencon Plastics Inc., a precision plastic injection molding company in Corona. Gencon has 35 employees and about $6 million a year in revenue, double its annual sales when acquired by Unique in 1996. Customers of the 20-year-old plastics company include Lucent Technologies, Hewlett-Packard and Xerox.
* CPI-The Alternative Supplier Inc., a 16-year-old manufacturer of analytical testing products in the environmental, pharmaceutical, education and government markets. It is based in Santa Rosa. The company employs 25 and has $8 million in annual revenue, up from $6 million when it was acquired by Unique in 1996.
* Hawker Pacific Inc., an international aerospace maintenance company specializing in repair and overhaul of commercial aircraft landing gear, hydraulic systems, wheels and brakes. The 40-year-old company was acquired by Unique in 1996 and was taken public in January to help fund its acquisition of British Airways’ landing gear division. The 400-employee company, based in Sun Valley, is expected to report $70 million in sales this year.
