Economy

Union Partners Buys Lamination Specialties
Written by Tim Triplett
March 3, 2018
Union Partners has acquired Lamination Specialties Corp., a manufacturer of electrical steel laminations with three Chicago-area locations. The company also operates a full-service electrical steel service center. It anticipates no disruption of services as it transitions to new ownership.
Lamination Specialties is the latest to join the Union Partners family, which includes Mapes & Sprowl, Cortran, Lee Steel, Berg Steel, Chicago Steel, JIT Steel Service, JIT Steel Transport and Opus Metals. Union Partners also supplies the electrical steel and lamination markets through Mapes & Sprowl and Cortran.
The acquisition of Lamination Specialties includes 300,000 square feet of prime manufacturing space with modern facilities, including over 40 high-speed stamping presses; four continuous roller-hearth annealing furnaces; precision slitting, cut-to-length and blanking equipment; and value-added offerings, including MITRE cores, distributed gap (DG) cores, and robotic welding capabilities.
Lamination Specialties supplies high-quality electrical steel laminations for a variety of applications in hundreds of shapes and sizes, as well as processed silicon electrical steel and cold rolled low carbon electrical steel. With over 60 years of experience in the industry, Lamination Specialties claims a large, diversified customer base across a variety of industries, including transformers, electric vehicles, motors, high-efficiency systems, robotics and automation, according to Union Partners co-founders Chris Hutter and Paul Douglass.

Tim Triplett
Read more from Tim TriplettLatest in Economy

ArcelorMittal plans wire-drawing closure in Hamilton, shifts production to Montreal
ArcelorMittal’s (AM) Hamilton location to be shuttered, wire production shifting to Montreal.
Beige Book finds growing economic, policy uncertainty
All districts reported "hesitancy and a cautious approach to business and household decisions,” according to the Beige Book.

ISM: Manufacturing continues to contract in May
May marks the third consecutive month US manufacturing activity declined, according to supply executives contributing to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM)’s latest report.

Chicago PMI decreases 4.1 points in May
The Chicago Business Barometer reports that decreases in new orders, order backlogs, and softer production pulled the index down by 4.1-points to 40.5, in May.

Architecture firms struggle through April
For the third month in a row, architecture firms reported a reduction in billings through April, according to the latest Architecture Billings Index release.