AERT’s MoistureShield composite decking.
Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies, a major end user of recovered PE, is being sold for more than $100 million.
Oldcastle Architectural will acquire Springdale, Ark.-based AERT for $117 million, according to a press release. AERT is a major producer of wood-plastic composite building products.
The acquisition allows Oldcastle Architectural to enter the composite decking category. AERT’s ChoiceDek and MoistureShield brands will complement Oldcastle Architectural’s existing portfolio of outdoor living brands, according to the announcement.
Founded in 1988, AERT has its primary manufacturing facility at its Springdale headquarters. It also operates a plastics recycling, blending and storage facility in Lowell, Ark. and a plastics recycling, cleaning and reformulation facility in Watts, Okla. In addition to its building products, the company sells recycled plastic resin compounds to other companies.
AERT has invested in recycling technologies to allow it to use recovered PE mixed with paper and other contaminates. The strategy reduces its feedstock costs and gives it a raw material cost advantage over its competitors using virgin plastics, according to AERT.
In 2016, AERT saw net sales of $85.3 million, up 3.2 percent from the year before. The publicly traded company’s net income for the year was $2.2 million, up from a net loss of $900,000 in 2015.
Oldcastle Architectural has 206 locations and more than 7,000 employees across the U.S. and Canada. The company noted that each of its subsidiaries “works autonomously to service their local markets, while leveraging the group’s best practices and resources.”
The transaction between AERT and Oldcastle Architectural is expected to close during the second quarter of 2017.
