NEW YORK, July 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Meritus Gas Partners (“Meritus”) announced today that it entered into a partnership with Applied Gas, Inc. (“Applied Gas”), a leading independent manufacturer and distributor of specialty gases headquartered in Danbury, Texas. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Applied Gas is a leading supplier of custom specialty gas mixtures. The company specializes in multi-component hydrocarbon gas mixtures used to calibrate analytical instrumentation at petrochemical plants producing olefins – ethylene, propylene and their derivatives.
Applied Gas is led by founders and Co-Presidents Burke Pleason and David Redick, who will continue to lead the business following the transaction and maintain significant equity ownership in Meritus.
“We are excited to welcome Burke and David and their dedicated employees into the Meritus family,” said Meritus’ Chairman, Scott Kaltrider. “Applied Gas has earned the reputation as the Gulf Coast’s premier supplier of highly customized gas mixtures critical to the sustained operations of olefin plants. Applied Gas has longstanding, stable relationships with its customers because of their expertise and exceptional service levels.”
“Applied Gas serves a complex sector of the specialty gas market, and our customers demand the highest standards of quality. We are passionate about partnering with them and addressing their technological needs,” said Pleason. “Meritus will help Applied Gas expand our capabilities as well as our geographic reach. We will supply the Meritus family of companies with our products and support our new partners and their customers’ growth.”
“We are expanding the breadth of Meritus’ specialty gas capabilities,” Kaltrider continued. “Partnering with Applied Gas, like our recent partnership with Global Calibration Gases, is a testament to our commitment to develop our specialty gas core competency. We are bringing preeminent leaders in the specialty gas field into our family to support our partner businesses and accelerate our growth.”
Founded in December 2020, Meritus is a portfolio company of AEA Investors Small Business Private Equity. Meritus is assembling a national network of high-quality independent distributors of industrial, medical and specialty gases and welding and safety supplies, located in diverse geographies and serving growing end-markets. Meritus will partner with exceptional businesses and management teams, allow them to remain independent and entrepreneurial and support them to accelerate growth, improve business quality and enhance value. Owners are invited to invest meaningful equity into the Meritus holding company to allow them to share in the success of the overall platform. Visit us online at www.MeritusGas.com.
AEA Investors LP was founded in 1968 by the Rockefeller, Mellon and Harriman family interests and S.G. Warburg & Co. as a private investment vehicle for a select group of industrial family offices with substantial assets. AEA has an extraordinary global network built over many years which includes leading industrial families, business executives and leaders; many of whom invest with AEA as active individual investors and/or join its portfolio company boards or act in other advisory roles. Today, AEA’s approximately 110 investment professionals operate globally with offices in New York, Stamford, San Francisco, London, Munich and Shanghai. The firm manages funds that have approximately $19 billion of invested and committed capital including the leveraged buyouts of middle market companies and small business companies, growth capital and mezzanine and senior debt investments. AEA Small Business Private Equity is a strategy within AEA that currently manages approximately $3 billion of invested and committed capital. The team seeks to help grow and transform companies at the lower end of the middle market by sponsoring growing companies with proven management teams and superior business models.
AEA Investors
Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher
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SOURCE Meritus Gas Partners