Bertram Capital Announces Investment in Safety Products Holdings

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Jan 06, 2021, 09:00 ET

FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bertram Capital ("Bertram') announced today the acquisition of Irvine, CA-based Safety Products Holdings ("SPH"), a leading provider of safety cutting tools and accessories. SPH represents the third investment completed in Bertram's fourth fund. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

"Through its two brands, Pacific Handy Cutter and Klever Innovations, SPH has established itself as a leading provider of safety cutting solutions," said Kevin Yamashita, Partner at Bertram Capital. "The Company's success reflects its superior product offering, U.S.-based manufacturing capabilities, and compelling safety value to its customers, as well as its entrenched relationships with marquee customers across a variety of industries. We are excited to partner with Mark Marinovich and the SPH team."

SPH encompasses one of the world's most complete and innovative lineups of safety cutting solutions. For over 70 years, the Company has a track record of innovating, designing, and manufacturing safety cutters to improve worker safety, reduce cutting injuries, and reduce damaged merchandise. The Company manufactures products in the United States and has a growing global customer base within warehouse, distribution, grocery, industrial retail, as well as consumer settings.

"We are excited to partner with the SPH team to pursue an aligned value creation strategy. The Company is well-positioned to expand its leadership in a niche sector that continues to benefit from favorable secular tailwinds," said Jeff Drazan, Managing Partner of Bertram Capital. "We believe our Bertram Labs technology enablement team will be a significant tool for SPH to leverage to further accelerate growth."

"We are extremely excited to partner with Bertram Capital to help us pursue our next phase of growth and further expand our customer base, geographic presence, and growth efforts. The Bertram team differentiated itself in the sale process through its clear understanding of our brand, our products, the Bertram Labs resources, and the favorable adoption trends in our market. We look forward to this new partnership with Bertram and our shared vision for the future of the Company," stated Mark Marinovich, CEO of SPH.

About Safety Products Holdings

SPH is a market leading provider of safety cutting tool systems in North America. The Company offers a comprehensive suite of highly engineered, consumable cutting tools that reduce employee injuries and product damage – and increase productivity – generating millions in annual savings for customers. SPH has established two premier brands – Pacific Handy Cutter and Klever Innovations – known for safety and performance. Under those two brands, the Company offers cutting tool handles, blades and accessories that are primarily sold B2B through many of the world's largest industrial distributors and direct to a highly diverse group of blue-chip end users for use in "back-of-the-house" applications. SPH serves the distribution center, mass merchandise, grocery, industrial, food service and pharmaceutical markets, among others. With dual, vertically integrated "centers-of-excellence" in blade manufacturing and injection molding in Irvine, CA and Grand Haven, MI, respectively, the Company's manufacturing flexibility and premium quality are unmatched in the industry. For more information, please visit phcsafety.com and kleverinnovations.net.

About Bertram Capital

Bertram Capital is a private equity firm targeting investments in lower middle market companies. Since its inception in 2006, the firm has raised over $1.7B of capital commitments. In addition to supplying strategic growth capital, Bertram Capital leverages proprietary processes and services, Bertram High-5^sm and Bertram Labs, to empower its portfolio companies to unlock their full business potential. The Bertram High-5^sm is an operationally-focused value creation strategy, which includes management augmentation, operational initiative implementation, complementary business acquisition, sales and marketing improvements, and leveraging technology and IP. The cornerstone of this strategy is Bertram Labs, its in-house technology team, which drives growth and value through digital marketing, e-commerce, big data and analytics, application development, and internal and external platform optimization. Visit www.bcap.com for more information.

SOURCE Bertram Capital