VPI Sells Last Operating Business

Sheboygan, WI, January 4--VPI L.L.C. said Monday that it has sold its floor products division -- its last remaining operating unit -- to a group that includes the division's general manager and former management of an Iowa spice company. VPI is a formerly family-owned, plastics products manufacturer that is selling its five operating units as part of plan by the family of R. Bruce Grover to divest the business. Since September, VPI sold three of its divisions to St. Louis-based Spartech Corp., for $83.5 million in cash, and a fourth division was being sold to Coeur Inc., a medical products molder in Washington, N.C., for undisclosed terms. The floor products division has been acquired by R. Steven Martin, Jeremy Williams and Robert Mac Pherson, who will rename the company as VPI Corp. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The floor products division is one of the company's oldest. It produces tile, vinyl and rubber flooring products out of a plant in Sheboygan. Martin will serve as president and chief executive officer, Williams as executive vice president and chief operating officer and Mac Pherson as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Martin and Mac Pherson previously served in the same respective roles at the Tone Brothers Spice Co. in Ankeny, Iowa, which was recently sold by Australian-based food company Burns Philp & Co. to Associated British Foods plc, United Kingdom. Williams had been general manager of VPI's flooring products division for the past year and a half. VPI had been supplying specialty floor tile and wall base products for use in commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings for over 50 years. The company employs approximately 60 people. VPI's other former units include a sheet products division in Sheboygan Falls; a contract manufacturing division in Manitowoc; and a film and converting division, a one-plant printing and laminating operation in Salisbury, Md. All of those units were sold to Spartech. The medical products division makes tubing and assemblies for the medical device industry.