Riverside partners Tegra with Mississippi contract manufacturer

January 15, 2010 by MassDevice staff

Private equity firm Riverside Partners acquires a majority stake in CTW Inc. to bolster the manufacturing capabilities of one of its existing portfolio companies, Tegra Medical of Franklin, Mass.

Riverside Partners is wasting little time putting its latest private equity fund to work, announcing the acquisition of a majority stake in a contract manufacturing company in Mississippi and partnering the new acquisition with Franklin, Mass.-based Tegra Medical.

The new pact is intended to extend both companies' reach with OEMs in the orthopedic market. In particular, South Hernando, Miss.-based CTW Inc. has a strong position producing components for spine and trauma devices as well as knee, hip and dental applications. The company was founded in 1976, but has focused solely on precision medical device manufacturing since 2000.

Terms of the deal, announced Jan. 15, were not disclosed. Riverside helped launch Tegra Medical in 2007 by funding the combination of New England Precision Grinding, Accu-Met Laser and American Medical Instruments into a single company now specializing in wire and tubular components used in devices for a variety of medical specialties.

Boston-based Riverside announced last week it had closed on its fourth investment fund, raising $406 million. Several existing Riverside investors, including the Mass. Institute of Technology, The Investment Fund for Foundations in suburban Philadelphia and New York-based Abbott Capital Management, have stakes in Riverside Fund IV, along with several state and corporate pension plans and other private investment vehicles.

In addition to the recent management-led recapitalizations of Tegra and CTW, Riverside Partners also has a significant stake in J-Pac LLC, a Somersworth, N.H.-based medical device assembly and packaging company. It also sold Northampton, Mass.-based MicroCal, which produces biomolecule measurement tools, to GE Healthcare in September, 2008.