Pioneer Metal Finishing Purchases Indianhead Plating

Photo Credit: Pioneer Metal Finishing

Pioneer Metal Finishing LLC (Green Bay, Wis.), a portfolio company of Aterian Investment Partners (New York, N.Y.), has acquired Indianhead Plating Inc. (Chippewa Falls, Wis.).

Founded in 1978, Indianhead provides chrome plating, roll services, cylindrical grinding and other related processes to customers in the agricultural, heavy equipment and general industrial end markets nationwide.

"I feel this is the perfect fit for Indianhead Plating and the Pioneer team, who have grown as a strategic consolidator of market leaders in the plating and finishing industry,” says John Altmann, owner of Indianhead. “I believe our shared commitment to providing high-quality finishes and services to our customers while maintaining a great home for our employees makes this the perfect combination."

"Since our initial investment into Pioneer, our objective has been to acquire sizable metal finishing businesses with differentiated capabilities in order to create a strategically unique platform in the space,” says Brandon Bethea, co-founder and partner at Aterian. “Pioneer has now completed three such unique add-on acquisitions and we anticipate continuing to grow this platform organically and acquisitively moving forward. Thus far, each acquisition completed by Pioneer has been a family- or founder-owned business and this dynamic fits nicely within Aterian's established practice of buying family- or founder-owned companies."

Scott Kettler, president and COO of Pioneer Metal Finishing.
Photo Credit: Pioneer Metal Finishing

“We’re excited to welcome Indianhead Plating into the Pioneer family,” adds Scott Kettler, Pioneer Metal Finishing’s president and COO. “They offer strong synergies to our service portfolio, supporting our goal of making Pioneer the leader in surface engineering solutions. The Indianhead division increases Pioneer’s North American workforce to more than 1,500 employees, with 11 facilities totaling over 1,000,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity. This new Pioneer division will be led by industry veteran and general manager Levi Eckwright.”