InterGroup International Plans to Grow through Acquisition

Neil Gloger, CEO of post-industrial plastics recycler InterGroup International, Euclid, Ohio, has announced the company has embarked on an “aggressive acquisition plan,” the first of which is expected to be finalized early in the second quarter of 2012. 
 

InterGroup also has purchased a new facility in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland near the main CSX line. Gloger says the InterGroup plans to develop a rail car transloading operation at the site, dealing in less-than-truckload prime material. 
 

“This is exciting for us,” he says of the new facility and future transloading operation. “I think it will have really nice potential moving forward.”
 

Gloger also says InterGroup has begun a number of acquisitions, the first of which he expects to close early in the second quarter of 2012. In the next six months, he says, the company will complete four or five high-profile acquisitions of post-industrial plastics recyclers within a 500-mile radius of InterGroup’s Euclid headquarters. Gloger says the company will accomplish these acquisitions without the help of outside equity investors. 
 

The targeted companies are not troubled assets, he adds. “We are looking to buy businesses that are already good businesses with good management teams and to pay a premium price for them.” He says, “Our systems will help grow their efficiencies. By installing financial and manufacturing controls, these acquisitions will be accretive to the bottom line within the first year.” 
 

When looking at potential acquisition targets, Gloger says InterGroup considers geographic efficiencies, the potential for vertical integration and access to new market segments.  
 

In the last year, InterGroup International also expanded its management staff, adding Scott Dittrich as operations manager. Prior to joining InterGroup, Dittrich worked for the aluminum company Alcan and for Bemis, a global supplier of flexible packaging and pressure sensitive label materials. “He has been a fantastic addition on our operations side,” Gloger says of Dittrich. “He will play an active role in helping to integrate the companies pending acquisitions,” Gloger adds.  
 

In the second quarter, the company also will bring online two additional Erema plants for converting plastic film into pellets. Gloger says these new additions will increase InterGroup’s reprocessing capacity by 4.5 million pounds per year. 
 

By the end of 2012, Gloger predicts InterGroup International will produce 90 million pounds per year of recycled plastics.