AST Bearings Seeks to Expand Via Acquisitions

AST Bearings, LLC (Montville, N.J), a leading supplier of miniature bearings, precision ball bearings and related products, announced that part of its continued growth strategy in 2010 is through the strategic acquisitions of other bearing supply companies. Company officials stated that sales growth this year is expected to come from four main sources: increased sales from existing customers, sales from new customers within existing product lines, new sales from new product lines to be introduced later this year 2010, and through the acquisition of complementary bearing companies.

AST outperformed the overall bearing industry in 2009 and has already showed greater than 20-percent sales growth in the first two months of 2010. AST?s chief executive officer, Dale Kaminski, attributes his company?s success to the value-added services not commonly found with other bearing suppliers. Kaminski stated, ?We are unmatched with our combination of products and services. We are uniquely positioned to provide OEMs and distributors a full range of engineered solutions in addition to stocking thousands of bearing and bearing related products to cost-efficiently and consistently provide just-in-time delivery.?

He continued, ?We work directly with our customers to help specify the best possible solution, many times saving them thousands of dollars in the process. This unique approach benefits the customer in countless ways including reducing their total cost of ownership. In return, this has given us increased orders and new customers even in a slow economy.?

AST plans to leverage their organic growth with strategic acquisitions of other bearing companies. According to Kaminski, they are actively pursuing both distributors and wholesale suppliers to add to the AST family. Specifically, Kaminski stated AST is seeking profitable North American bearing companies with revenues in the range of $2 million to $30 million. He is looking for companies that can either expand AST product offerings or their value-added services. Kaminski also mentioned he expects that many of these companies will be entrepreneur-owned allowing the owners to receive good compensation for all their years they put into building their business.

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www.astbearings.com