Champlain Will Supply High-Performance Cables for Over 200 MARTA Rail Cars!

 The success of a company is the benchmark of those victories which reflect its commitment to innovation and quality. Champlain Cable, a subsidiary of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation owned by Leonard Levie, has achieved such a benchmark by winning the subcontract of the Stadler Rail Car Project.

Stadler US Inc. was awarded the contract of metro trains by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). The MARTA METRO Project is a multi-year contract that is worth several million dollars and is meant to develop metro trains intended for service to the world’s largest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 

To successfully complete the order of metro trains on time, Stadler is looking for partners who can supply the best quality components. Stadler selected Champlain Cable to supply high-performance wire and cable for more than 200 rail cars for the MARTA Metro project.

This is a moment of celebration for Champlain Cable for being recognized at such a huge level for its sheer dedication to innovation, compliance, responsiveness, and attention to detail. 

According to the agreement made between Champlain Cable and Stadler US Inc, Champlain Cable will now support the expanding MARTA rail network by supplying its highly innovative EXRAD-RHF low-smoke, halogen-free (LSHF) polymer technology and crosslinking capability. Champlain Cable will commence the supply in 2022 and is scheduled to conclude in 2028-2029.

The Success Journey of Champlain Cable that Was Once Under-Performing 

Champlain Cable, now a successfully running company, was once burdened with thousands of related asbestos claims and soil and underground environmental cleanup obligations along with pension underfunding liabilities worth $594,000. This transformation didn’t happen overnight.

Champlain Cable was acquired by an AIAC affiliate - CC Acquisition Corporation in June 2003 from Huber + Suhner based in Zurich, Switzerland. At the end of December 2002, Champlain Cable produced only $19.8 million as revenue and lost EBITDA of $2.2 million. Its shareholder’s equity was just $3.6 million. 

However, after being acquired by the owner of AIAC affiliate, Leonard Levie, Champlain performed significantly better as it produced revenues of $21.3 million and positive EBITDA of $1.3 million. Over the following years, Champlain grew into a company with not one but five production facilities: one in Colchester VT, two in El Paso TX, and two in the greater Houston TX area. Besides, the company now works in full compliance with all relevant environmental, pension, and other obligations.

For the year 2018, Champlain made revenues of $111.6 million and EBITDA of $14.7 million, and its Shareholder’s Equity amounted to $51.6 million. 

Now, under the leadership of Leonard Levie, Champlain Cable has been awarded a multi-million dollar Stadler Rail Car Project for supplying high-performance power and control cables for over 200 rail cars.

The subway cars equipped with Champlain’s high-performance cables and wires will operate across the entire MARTA network, serving more than 175,000 passengers on a typical weekend. This OEM approval is exemplary of how Leonard Levie transforms underperforming companies into successful ones that contribute to the national and regional economy.

Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and Bradford ECAPS Sign MoU for Orbital Debris Removal Services

Common Earth orbits are becoming increasingly congested due to more and more space exploration missions as more space agencies deploy satellite constellations than ever before. Orbital debris are released from spacecraft or rocket bodies in common earth orbits, which poses a risk to spacecraft and satellites in Earth orbit and has a negative impact on space infrastructure and Earth. To address this issue, Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and Bradford ECAPS came together and have signed an MoU to provide orbital debris removal services.

ECAPS, owned by Bradford Space (a company in the AIAC Group), is very excited to team up with Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) for this space cleaning mission. Starting from 2024, Bradford Space / ECAPS and SSC will provide orbital debris removal services as part of their commercial services. Bradford Space will launch a satellite bus, named ‘Square Rocket’, with significant delta-V capability into the earth orbit from the Esrange Space Center. This satellite bus will deorbit the orbital debris and junk to clear common earth orbits for spacecraft and satellites. 

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by SSC and Bradford Space’s ECAPS at the 2021 International Aeronautical Congress in Dubai. To accomplish this mission and provide orbital debris removal services, a new spaceport facility - Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden - is currently under construction and will be operational from 2022.

Talking about the MoU agreement for sustainable use of space, L. M. Levie, Chairman of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) stated,

“This has been an astonishing journey. The agreement with SSC further demonstrates the tireless dedication and brilliance of the Bradford team combined with the superiority of our technology.”

American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) has acquired Bradford Space in 2016 and played a significant role in what the current Bradford Space began to take form. AIAC is a privately-held industrial and investment group that seeks to acquire under-performing companies and invest in manufacturing and distribution operations to build enduring and flourishing businesses. Under AIAC, Bradford Space started acquiring companies to form a ‘Bradford Workspaces’ to rebrand and reimagine the commercial space industry. Talking about the MoU with SSC, Patrick van Put, Managing Director for Bradford Space European operations said,

“Bradford Space / ECAPS is very excited to team up with SSC for this venture, which is based on exceptional complementary capabilities from both Swedish entities”

Earlier this year, Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) launched a new program to create a safer and more sustainable space environment for space exploration companies. As part of Space Situational Awareness (SSA), the program will consist of initiatives such as detection, tracking, identification, and addressing man-made space objects space junks in common earth orbits through the analysis of SSA data. The MoU between SSC and Bradford ECAPS for orbital debris removal will showcase Sweden as a leader in orbital debris mitigation for sustainable use of space.

American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC): An Investment Company Helping Underperforming Businesses

Founded in 1996, American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a global industrial group that helps underperforming businesses to revitalize their operations.  AIAC is a privately held investment groupwith an investment portfolio consisting of manufacturing and distribution businesses in 24 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia. It aims to build enduring businesses through industrial investment and management by purchasing the units of large multinational public companies as well as equity and debt of privately held companies, then managing their operational turnaround so that they can survive and thrive in the long run.

AIAC and its affiliates have invested in businesses across most industrial sectors, including rail, automotive, aerospace, defense, mining, oil& gas, power generation, packaging, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment. As a manufacturing and distribution-focused group, AIAC provides financial solutions and credibility to struggling companies with a long-term mission to build enduring and flourishing businesses.

Deal Sourcing and Criteria

·         As a global industrial group, the company acquires underperforming and non-core businesses in the manufacturing and distribution sectors across the world.

·         AIAC acquires businesses from sellers ranging from private companies to multinational corporations. 

·         The group aims to provide support and solutions to underperforming businesses struggling with financial commitment with secured and subordinated loans. 

·         AIAC works with investment bankers, corporate development professionals, independent sponsors, lawyers, accountants,  and other individuals who bring new investment opportunities.

·         AIAC review every opportunity it receives on a case-by-case basis to seek the right investment opportunities.  It responds rapidly to new situations.

·         In addition to purchasing and acquiring business units of public and private companies, AIAC also purchases the equity and debt of private companies

Global pandemic sparks high demand for paper produced at northern Manitoba mill.

 Nearly five years ago, the kraft paper mill in The Pas, Manitoba was about to be shut down. But today, it is running in high gear, making and delivering paper for packaging to customers all over the world.  Indeed, the product is in high demand during the global pandemic.

In August 2016, It’s owner, Tolko Industries, announced it was closing its kraft paper mill in The Pas, a town in Northern Manitoba with a population of 5,513. As a result of the shut down, 332 mill workers would be instantly unemployed, along with hundreds more loggers, truckers, and service industry workers that depended on the town’s largest employer. 

Leonard M. Levie, the founder and chairman of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation, led the exploration, negotiation and purchase of Tolko's paper mill after it announced its intention to shut down it in 2016.Canadian Kraft Paper Industries was born.  He stated, “This was among the most challenging acquisitions and turnaround executions we have ever attempted worldwide.  It was an excruciatingly complex, heated, multilateral negotiation with corporate, union and non-union labor, town, provincial, federal, and First Nations stakeholders, each wielding an effective veto over the salvation of the plant. It was an apt test of AIAC’s analytic and negotiating skills.”He added, “The post-acquisition turnaround management was similarly tough, involving a retooling of the management team and business plan.”Within a year of acquisition, the mill was fully turned around, producing record profits in 2018 and 2019.  Then Covid hit. 

The company’s leadership, in cooperation with the union and non-union workforce, and the town of The Pas, decided to keep the business safely running throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  The pandemic hit the entire province of Manitoba hard.  Nevertheless, the mill rapidly instituted new, rigorous safety protocols and practices and continued to produce northern Manitoba products around the clock, seven days a week. 

Kraft paper manufactured at the Canadian Kraft Paper mill is used to manufacture bags for commodities such as sugar, flour, pet food, and cement.  It is also used for the packaging used for deliveries arriving on doorsteps around the world as online shopping has become increasingly popular, especially during the pandemic. Quarantines, social distancing and isolation also led to a rapid rise in pet ownership, which stimulated pet food sales, anda spike in the demand for pet food packaging. On top of that, a migration of plastic to paper packaging, due to environmental concerns surrounding plastic, further boosted sales of Canadian Kraft’s product.

Trees that are used to produce Kraft paper only grow in northern Manitoba. Slow-growing trees mature over a long period of time, making the tree fibers among the strongest on earth.

Fiber strength is much higher than that of the fiber produced from trees in the southern U.S. In fact, only a few places in North America and Europe produce unbleached Kraft paper like what the mill in the Pas produces.

Leonard M. Levie stated “It has often been said ‘success has many fathers, yet failure is an orphan.’ In our case, success has been the direct result of the shared vision, sacrifice, dedication and passion of the Canadian Kraft Paper Industries family, the great people of The Pas and the Northern Manitoba region, and First Nations. We are a great team.”

Who is Leonard M. Levie? What does Leonard M. Levie do?

Leonard M. Levie is the Chairman and Founder of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC).In 1996, he established this firm to acquire underperforming and non-core manufacturing and distribution companies.

    

What does Leonard M. Levie do?

Apart from being the Chairman of AIAC and its subsidiaries, Leonard M. Levie is Chairman of the AIAC Foundation, Inc.  He has lectured at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the Turnaround Management Association, and the Association for Corporate Growth.

He has been a panelist with Hon. Fabius Laurent, the former Prime Minister of France, on Investing in France, at the Consulate General of France in New York in 2015.

In addition to other roles, he is also an active member of various councils, societies, and clubs, such as the Trilateral Commission, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations Legacy Society, the Yale CEO Summit, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society of Harvard Law School, the Copper Club, Chatham House, the American Red Cross Legacy Society, and many more.

Which types of underperforming businesses does Leonard M. Levie deal with?

AIAC and its affiliates hold controlling interests in companies which serve the following sectors: packaging materials, pharmaceuticals, power generation, medical devices, mining, automation, food and beverage, aviation &aerospace, defense, truck, rail, marine, pulp and paper, construction, and more.

Mr. Levie founded AIAC with the principle of acquiring underperforming companies and helping them to survive and flourish. Since the inception of AIAC, his firm has purchased and operated manufacturing units of some of the largest corporations in the world, including Boeing, Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Merck, Pfizer, GSK, and Siemens.

In addition to purchasing manufacturing units of large multinational public companies, his firm also buys the equity and debt of privately held companies. AIAC is a conservatively capitalized group, with permanent equity capital and no net debt.

Leonard Levie Revitalizes Failing Businesses Even in Hopeless Situations

Leonard M. Levie is the founder and chairman of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC).  An eternal optimist, has always believed that every cloud has a silver lining, provided that you look hard enough for it.  His team at AIAC has rapidly develop and implement the key operational and financial actions to revitalize struggling manufacturing and distribution businesses.

Businesses that are on the verge of falling apart often close down because they don’t have sufficient human and financial capital to develop and execute an effective turnaround plan.  This typically results in the loss of hundreds and, sometimes, thousands of jobs for contractors and skilled and unskilled laborers, which can impact an entire community. 

Over the past quarter century, AIAC has identified, acquired, and turned around a large collection of underperforming manufacturing and acquisition companies located on four continents.

One of the most dramatic examples where Leonard M. Levie and his team at AIAC have saved a declining businesses include the case of Craft Paper Industries Ltd.: 

Tolko Industries, a multi-billion dollar revenue, privately held, timber, paper & pulp mill group based in Canada, announced the closure of its kraft paper manufacturing facility located in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada, located 835 miles northeast of Minneapolis, MN in August 2016.  As a result of the impending closure, 300 woodland contractors and 330 union employees faced immediate unemployment. Despite this crisis, which the national Canadian media declared to be a hopeless situation, Mr. Levie saw an interesting opportunity for the revival and revitalization of the business and purchased the mill just three weeks before the announced shutdown date.

Before the acquisition, the paper mill had negligible paper orders along with a fleeing customer and supplier base. But less than 1 year after its acquisition, the mill, rebranded as Canadian Kraft Paper Industries Ltd., started humming again.  Today, the mill profitably produces and exports worldwide the highest quality grades of kraft paper for a myriad of blue chip corporate clients. AIAC accomplished this by designing and implementing a bold turnaround plan which combined revenue enhancement, cost containment, massive equipment investment.

The dramatic saga of Canadian Kraft Paper Industry is hardly unique for AIAC.  This turnaround story is repeated at dozens of other AIAC companies, including Champlain Cable, Titanium Fabrication, Euro foil, Arn prior Aerospace, Super Alloy Manufacturing, Vermont Aerospace, Be Link, Malaga Aerospace, Bradford Space, Neotiss, D2A, Shiro Group, Avara Pharmaceuticals, Combiwear Parts, Consolidated Industries, Craft Machine Works, Epalia, Forte Micro, IP3 Plastics, Lenape Forged Products, MG, Umbilical International, and Union Metals. Each has a similar story to tell.  Each of these companies was universally regarded by their industry and community as hopelessly insolvent, unprofitable, and unfixable.  Each was turned around by the AIAC turnaround team. AIAC operates like a combination of a close knit family and a vigorous university debating society.  The Socratic method prevails.  Turnaround target companies’core operational and financial issues, and the appropriate turnaround action steps to address them are endlessly discussed internally before an acceptably high probability turnaround strategy is set.  All opinions are welcome and passions run high.  New information on the target company’s products, markets, customers, supplier is instantly considered, and hotly debated.  Turnaround strategies are immediately adjusted, and 180 degree pivots in strategic direction are often the result. The plan is then implemented by selected AIAC turnaround executives, based on their specific track record, geographic location, and language skills. 

No one attempting such corporate high wire acts is perfect, and enduring the unrelenting ire of disappointed stake holders is part of the job description. In such cases, stones are hurled by local press and politicians.  This is particularly true when a turnaround necessarily requires a strategic, surgical divestment or dissolution of a non-viable-subsidiary, in order to save a much larger core, parent business which supports thousands of jobs. Turnaround managers at AIAC know that designing and implementing a revitalization plan that saves the most jobs is as important as transforming losses into profits. 

 AIAC’s turnaround track record is stunning, with an enviable 25 year, global win/loss ratio rumored to be 20 to 1.  This has produced a compounded annual return on invested capital that is unadvertised and closely guarded.  AIAC has never raised capital from limited partners and has no plans to do so.  AIAC now consists of 78 manufacturing and distribution sites in 24 countries on 4 continents.

Leonard M. Levie- Chairman and Founder of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation and the AIAC Foundation Inc.

American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) was established in 1996 by Leonard M. Levie.  The company has reached a quarter century milestone with 78 manufacturing and distribution affiliates in 19 countries, but the passion to do more still exists.

Who is Leonard M. Levie?

Leonard M. Levie is the Chairman of AIAC and each of its subsidiaries or affiliates, which Arnprior Aerospace, Avara Pharmaceutical Services, Be Link, Bradford Space, Champlain Cable, D2A, Euro foil, Forte Micro, GeCoe, Malaga Aerospace Defense Electronics Systems, Titanium Fabrication Corporation. Vermont Aerospace, and Umbillicals International, among others.  

Mr. Levie has been a guest lecturer at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, the Association for Corporate Growth, and the Turnaround Management Association.

In addition, Leonard M. Levie is the Director of the Forest Products Association of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a Member of the Alexander Graham Bell Legacy Society of the National Geographic Society.

What Leonard M. Levie and his company do?

Simply said, the AIAC is an Industrial manufacturing-focused group. Leonard M. Levie with his AIAC team acquires manufacturing companies from the largest corporations in the world. The company works on the principle of

“Acquiring under-performing companies and helping those companies to survive and thrive.”

Some of the units that AIAC has purchased and operated are:

•    Ahlstrom
•    Astrellas
•    Boeing
•    Carlyle Group
•    Constellium
•    GlaxoSmithKline
•    Jabil Circuit
•    Johnson Controls
•    Kodak
•    Lockheed Martin
•    Merck
•    Moog
•    Northrop Grumman
•    Novelis
•    Pfizer
•    Raytheon Technologies
•    Rexel Group
•    The Riverside Company
•    Sandvik
•    Siemens
•    SSC
•    Suez Group
•    Tolko
•    Visteon

Other than these units of multinational public companies, AIAC purchases the equity and debt of privately held companies.

Under the guidance of Leonard M. Levie, the portfolio of AIAC consists of 78 manufacturing and distribution sites with over 8,500 employees in 24 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company owns over 6.5 million square feet of industrial real and holds the exclusive, perpetual license to responsibly manage 22 million acres of prime Canadian Timberland, a landmass equivalent to the size of Hungary. The company’s annual revenue exceeds $1.6 billion.

Why is it beneficial to transact with AIAC?

•    Completes transactions in as short as 15 to 30 days, including due diligence and documentation
•    Utilizes an internal team to originate, analyze and execute acquisition transactions
•    Executes all standard non-disclosure agreements and conducts its due diligence quietly, without disruption to target company’s operations.
•    Offers a high probability of closing to sellers
•    Accepts most asset sale and share sale documents, with no or few changes
•    Facilitates the full transfer of all liabilities, contingent and non-contingent
•    Doesn’t require financing from external parties
•    Offers global synergies to acquired companies in areas likes sales, marketing, raw materials and equipment procurement, industrial engineering, accounting, legal, IT, HR, and insurance.

American Industrial Acquisition Corporation, under the leadership of Leonard M. Levie, helps non-core manufacturing and distribution business owners to survive and thrive in the industry.