David Waltz, president of East Hartford, Conn.-based Booth Waltz Enterprises, which does business as G.H. Berlin, noted the company has made 18 or 19 acquisitions over the past 17 years, though all were considerably smaller. Waltz recalled that private equity firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. about a year ago had decided to begin divesting itself of Windward Petroleum, which eventually included spinning off its Southeast and Southwest operations.

Stephen [Eldred] had an option to buy the remaining platforms, and he approached me as to whether we would like to do this thing together, to take advantage of the combined strength of the two companies in the Northeast, Waltz told Lube Report. We have a lot of potential synergies between G.H. Berlin and Windward, and we also have a lot of the same go-to-market values. We decided we could better serve the marketplace together. Fortunately, we were able to put together a deal with Brown Brothers Harriman.

Founded in 1920, G.H. Berlin has locations in East Hartford and Canterbury, Conn.; Nashua, N.H.; St. Johnsbury, Vt.; and Dover, N.J. Windwards remaining locations are in Manchester, N.H.; Hampden and Westbrooke in Maine, Rutland, Vt.; and in Youngwood and Erie, Penn.

Certainly brand diversity was one of the key focal points of the deal, Waltz said, noting that G.H. Berlin had not been a distributor for ExxonMobil, Chevron or Castrol, as Windward is. That was certainly a consideration.

G.H. Berlin is a large Conoco-Phillips and Valvoline distributor, and also distributes other brands such as Motorcraft and Petro-Canada. In the past, Windward has had the Valvoline line, so there should be some tremendous synergy values with the brand between the two companies, Waltz noted. One of our challenges is going to be how to manage the brands, and use the strengths in the areas of the marketplace that best suit those brands strengths.

G.H. Berlin had been impressed with Windward. We have competed with them over the years, and were cognizant of how good their management skills in the Northeast were, and the history of the resources they had up there, Waltz said. We felt it was a good fit with our philosophies, a good fit with our systems, and we were very pleased to sit down and put something together that positions us as well as we are now in the Northeastern part of the United States. Our philosophy is one of contiguous geography. Were in a marketplace thats easy to service, that were familiar with – we can actually get in a car and drive to the various places.

Waltz emphasized that G.H. Berlin and Windward are both profitable, standalone companies. As a private company, we have plenty of time to maximize the strengths and leadership and the brands of both companies, he said. We have time to be able to figure that out. By design, were going to make the process to pick up some synergies probably a slower process than how a private equity group would do it. Were in this for the long term. Were in this to build a strong, regional company and to service our customer base, and compete with the people in our region.

What were really focused on is to try to utilize our people, and expand our customer base, he continued. Were hoping that were going to be able to grow our gross revenues, and our product sales, and to incorporate and take advantage of our existing facilities, and trucks, and operations fleet.