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Wakefield, MA (April 24, 2019) – Flow Research has learned from multiple sources that yesterday, April 23, 2019, TASI Group acquired Onicon.  Though no official announcement of the acquisition has yet been made apart from an internal memo, Flow Research has been able to confirm that this acquisition has occurred.  Terms of the transaction are unknown at this time.

TASI GROUP

The history of TASI Group goes back to 1981, when the company was founded as Cincinnati Test Systems.  In 1999, TASI Group was established as a holding company.  TASI stands for Total Automated Solutions, Inc. (TASI). On December 21, 2005, TASI  Group bought AW Company of Franksville, Wisconsin, a manufacturer of positive displacement meters.  At that time TASI Group already owned Lake Monitors, a manufacturer of variable area meters.  TASI put the two companies together to form AW-Lake, which it still owns.  AW-Lake manufactures several types of positive displacement meters, including spur gear, along with turbine, variable area, and paddlewheel meters.

An important part of the AW Company acquisition is that AW had previously (in March 2004) purchased controlling interest in KEM Kueppers (KEM) of Karlsfeld, Germany.  As a result of this acquisition, KEM became a TASI Group company.  KEM manufactures Tricor Coriolis meters, helical positive displacement meters, and turbine flowmeters.   The company also manufactures a type of piston positive displacement meter that is used to measure low viscosity fluids in dosing and filling applications.  While KEM’s headquarters is in Karlsfeld, its manufacturing facility is in Bad Kötzting in the Black Forest of Germany.

At the time it acquired AW Company and formed AW-Lake, TASI Group was owned by Industrial Growth Partners (IGP), which acquired TASI in September 2003.  On May 31, 2007, IGP sold TASI Group to Clear Light Partners.  Clear Light Partners was formed in 2000 and is based in Newport Beach, California.   On September 1, 2012, TASI Group appointed John McKenna, former CEO of Ashcroft, as President of its Flow Division.  Two years later, in June 2014, Clear Light Partners sold TASI Group to Berwind Group of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  TASI is still a Berwind company.

Besides AW-Lake and KEM, TASI’s Flow Division is made up of four other companies: EXACT Dispensing Systems, LitreMeter, Signal Fire Wireless Telemetry, and Voegtlin Instrument Systems.  Voegtlin, which is located in Switzerland, is a manufacturer of mass flow controllers, variable area flowmeters, and control valves.

The Berwind Group was founded in 1886 as Berwind Coal Mining Company.  In 1962 a new management group decided to stop operating coal mines and instead lease them to other companies.  At that point, the company began to diversify into other areas.  Today it owns companies that employ about 6,000 people.  It has declared its intention to invest over $1.5 billion in acquisitions in the next three years.

ONICON

Onicon has been in the flow measurement business since 1987, and is located in Largo, Florida.  The company is a manufacturer of turbine, magnetic, ultrasonic, thermal mass, vortex, Pitot tube, and btu meters.  On August 31, 2016, Onicon acquired Seattle Metrics (Seametrics), a manufacturer of magnetic flowmeters for irrigation, industrial, and water & wastewater applications.  Shortly thereafter, on September 6, 2016, Onicon announced that it had added Fox Thermal Instruments to its portfolio.  Fox is a manufacturer of thermal mass flowmeters.

For more details, go to www.worldflow.com and click on Flash Reports.

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