Will-Burt Co. will be involved in guarding nuclear weapons on U.S. military bases with one of its two new business acquisitions.
And the Orrville employee-owned telescoping mast and tower company said it anticipates taking the newly bought expertise, which provides sophisticated security for the military, and expanding into the private sector.
Will-Burt on Monday announced it bought two business lines from Diebold Inc., the Green-based maker of ATMs and security systems. Terms were not disclosed in the deal that closed on Dec. 31.
“We are hiring a handful of people from Diebold,” said Scott Hinterleiter, Will-Burt spokesman and the company’s director of marketing and business development. Will-Burt now has about 350 employees.
In one part of the transaction, Will-Burt bought Diebold’s security filing cabinet business, a specialty line that Will-Burt has manufactured on behalf of Diebold for years, Hinterleiter said.
“Now they’re Will-Burt cabinets,” he said. That means Will-Burt’s name and not Diebold’s will appear on the safe-like security cabinets that are used for such things as storing top-secret government, military and corporate documents.
Will-Burt also bought Diebold’s LINX business, which provides access control and security for properties and buildings.
The LINX “Predator Elite” system integrates such things as thermal imagers, card access, video cameras and more to detect intruders and to control who is allowed onto military sites, the company said. That system “is the only integrated security solution certified for installation at U.S. Air Force nuclear weapon storage sites,” Will-Burt said in a statement. Another automated LINX system, GateMaster, controls who can walk or drive into and out of bases and campuses.
“It’s a meaningful acquisition,” Hinterleiter said. “This is very high-level security.”
And it also puts Will-Burt in the software and system design business, he said. Will-Burt won’t manufacture the technology used in LINX security systems but will write software and design the systems using hardware acquired from other companies, he said.
The LINX business is “quite different” from what Will-Burt historically has done, Hinterleiter said.
“That’s why it’s meaningful,” he said.
“We believe it’s a big growth opportunity,” Hinterleiter said. While Diebold focused on sales to government, Will-Burt sees opportunities to expand into the private sector by doing such things as providing security systems for corporate headquarters, he said.
The LINX business is now located in Southern California and will be moved to Orrville with the relocation of several software and systems designers, Hinterleiter said.
This is the fifth acquisition Will-Burt has done in the last two-plus years, he said. Will-Burt bought two businesses last year, including a specialized telescoping mast-maker in Germany.
Shares of Diebold rose 1.5 percent to $31.17 in Monday trading. The company’s stock rose 3.7 percent in 2012.
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com.