Fairbanks Morse Defense continues its acquisition spree

Privately-owned Maxim Watermakers has become the latest company to be acquired by Beloit, Wis.-based Fairbanks Morse Defense (FMD), a portfolio company of Arcline Investment Management (Arcline).

Shreveport, La., based Maxim Watermakers is a provider of ship desalination and water treatment technologies. Its systems provide life-sustaining water for crews during ship deployments. This position Maxim as what FMD calls “an essential addition” for FMD to provide turnkey onboard solutions and global technical support that ensure crews are always mission ready.

“What we do is critically important to the safety of our nation and the world, and FMD is firmly committed to being a single-source partner who can deliver turnkey services when and where our customers need us with no time to spare,” said FMD CEO George Whittier. “Maxim has a strong reputation of producing high-quality water treatment systems with a customer-centric approach, which makes it a great addition to our rapidly growing array of best-in-class marine technologies.”

In recent months, FMD has previously completed the acquisitions of Federal Equipment Company (FEC), Hunt Valve Company, Ward Leonard, and Welin Lambie.

Operating from a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Shreveport, Maxim currently delivers two lines of seawater reverse osmosis desalination systems and one brackish water reverse osmosis desalination system. Its heat recovery evaporators utilize waste heat to make high-quality potable water from seawater, brackish water, or contaminated feed water sources. Maxim’s products and services include evaporators, reverse osmosis systems, salinity monitoring equipment, cleaning solutions, engineering, parts fabrication, and technical services.

“Like FMD, Maxim does not take lightly the role that we play in making sure our military marine customers are mission-ready,” said Brian Herbert, Maxim CEO. “Our commitment to quality has already earned us the trust of military leadership and becoming part of FMD further strengthens that trust. As part of the FMD brand, we will be able to deploy our technology and expand to more ship classes more quickly.”