{"id":49382,"date":"2021-01-10T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-fab-purchased-by-private-equity-firm\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:46:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:46:56","slug":"ska-fab-purchased-by-private-equity-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-fab-purchased-by-private-equity-firm\/","title":{"rendered":"Ska Fab purchased by private equity firm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Matt
Matt Vincent, co-owner of Ska Fabricating, adjusts cans on a Ska Fabricating production line designed for another of his companies, Oh Hi Beverage, which makes THC-infused sparkling seltzers. Vincent said the purchase of Ska Fab by Hanover Partners will bring an infusion of cash that will help Ska Fab continue to grow. Ska has averaged 15 to 20% growth since it was founded in 2012.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ska Fab, the company started by Durango microbrewer Matt Vincent, a partner in Ska Brewing, and Durango machinist Dan Morris to meet the manufacturing needs of craft brewers, has been purchased by a private equity firm, Hanover Partners.<\/p>\n

Ska Fabricating, more commonly known as Ska Fab, will remain operating at its current location, 545 Turner Drive, Suite A, in Bodo Industrial Park, Vincent said.<\/p>\n

Its employee numbers are expected to grow from 60 up to 70 employees by the end of the year with the infusion of capital that will come from the purchase of the company by Hanover Partners, Vincent said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had approached just about a year-and-a-half ago, with interest in Ska Fab and over the past year and a half of negotiating and working things out with them, we agreed to essentially partner with them,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cThey are focused on keeping the company in Durango. That was big emphasis for us \u2013 that they want to keep all manufacturing here in Durango.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some local control will be lost. Hanover Partners will have three seats on Ska\u2019s five-member board of directors, Vincent said.<\/p>\n

Financial details of the acquisition by Hanover were not released.<\/p>\n

Capital from Hanover Partners will be especially key in sustaining Ska Fab\u2019s growth, which has ranged from 15% to 20% since its founding in June 2012.<\/p>\n

\"An
An employee welds components at Ska Fabricating in this picture taken in 2014. Ska Fabricating was purchased on Dec. 31 by Hanover Partners, a private equity firm with offices in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. Ska Fab&#x2019;s manufacturing will remain in Durango at its plant in Bodo Industrial Park.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ska began by creating can depalletizers, machines that automatically stack cases of beer cans or other products on a pallet, that worked for smaller production runs typical of craft brewers.<\/p>\n

Traditional giant depalletizers used by Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Pabst Brewing Co. typically process 2,500 cans a minute and cost up to $200,000 \u2013 far more machine than typically required by a craft brewer.<\/p>\n

Ska Fab now makes several manufacturing components \u2013 like conveyors and packaging line equipment \u2013 that meet the needs of smaller beverage and food producers.<\/p>\n

Ska Fab has provided more than 1,000 businesses with depalletizers and specialized packing line equipment in all 50 states, seven Canadian provinces and in 23 countries.<\/p>\n

Vincent said the move by craft breweries to move from bottles to cans and a move by consumers to favor smaller, niche food producers has fueled Ska Fab\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n

Ska Fab is especially aiming to expand beyond the beverage market and already is working with a producer of spices to automate the jarring of its herbs.<\/p>\n

While Ska Fab started with lower-speed lines more suitable to smaller producers, Vincent said, it now is designing packaging systems that handle up to 100 containers per minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne hundred containers a minute is a fairly large company, so they just have multiple lines that they run on,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cOur equipment is very diverse and has a very small footprint. It can be put in a lot of different facilities that previously had been manually handling containers. Now, they can automate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, has not slowed Ska\u2019s sales.<\/p>\n

Initially in 2020, with its COVID-19-induced economic slow down, Vincent said business \u201clooked scary for a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c2020 started scary for everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cBut given that people switched from drinking at bars and restaurants to drinking at home, it ended up increasing demand for our equipment from manufacturers.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanover Partners will bring capital infusion; manufacturing in Durango likely to benefit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[338,950],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-enterprises","tag-durango"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87576,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49382\/revisions\/87576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49382"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}