Milton Street Capital, a Houston-based lower middle market private equity firm, announced the simultaneous acquisition of the Life Sciences business of Worthington Industries and International Cryogenics, Inc. Following the closing, these two cryogenic biomedical equipment manufacturers will operate under IC Biomedical.
The Life Sciences business of Worthington Industries (“Life Sciences”), located in Theodore, AL, is a market leading manufacturer of cryogenic stainless steel and aluminum storage freezers, dewars and shippers used to store biological specimens. The Life Sciences business was previously owned by Taylor-Wharton, which sold its biomedical storage products under the “CryoScience by Taylor-Wharton” brand, among others. The business has a 50-year legacy of supplying high quality products to the demanding global biomedical research and development, healthcare, biorepository, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, IVF and animal breeding markets.
International Cryogenics, Inc. (“ICI”), based in Indianapolis, IN, is a manufacturer of cryogenic aluminum, freezers, dewars, shippers and custom products for biomedical applications. With a long history dating back over 40 years, ICI is well-known as a high-quality manufacturer in the industry.
IC Biomedical will be led by Steve Shaw, CEO and Jim Hoppel, CFO. Steve has over 25 years of cryogenic biomedical market experience as President of Chart Industries’ former BioMedical Group (MVE and Caire). Jim was formally the CAO and VP, Corporate Development at Chart Industries and CFO at Taylor-Wharton.
“We are thrilled to partner with Steve and Jim to form IC Biomedical. The combination of Steve’s leadership experience and well-known market presence, and Life Sciences’ and ICI’s long history of manufacturing high quality cryogenic biomedical storage products makes this an excellent fit. Biomedical cold storage is a high growth sector, and we are excited to partner with an industry-leading management team to build a company that is both customer focused and operationally excellent.”
Francis Carr, Managing Partner Milton Street Capital
“Milton Street’s experience in complex corporate carve-out transactions made them the ideal partner for combining Worthington’s Life Sciences business and ICI. We look forward to executing on our vision to build a leading biomedical cold storage business. The merger of these two established businesses provides an unequalled platform to serve an ever growing and more demanding biomedical market. We will manufacture in a medical device accredited facility providing products with the highest regulatory compliance and quality. The distribution partners and customers of IC Biomedical can be assured that we will provide an increased level of support and partnership moving forward with a program of new product development and a significant investment in quality.”
Steve Shaw, CEO IC Biomedical