WATER TREATMENT
Standish observes.“ As with the other companies it bought, MFG serves water treatment service companies so all acquisition targets serve only these customers.”
New owner in place
MFG itself was originally a family-owned custom production house, which made bespoke products for customers in diversified speciality chemicals markets. It had strong production capabilities devoted mainly to custom manufacturing.
In 2017, the family sold to private equity investor Platte River Equity, which focused the business on industrial water treatment and industrial paints and coatings additives, plus some continuing custom products in other markets, notably oil and gas, pulp and paper, personal care, mining, metal working, agriculture and HI & I.
Partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, MFG spent longer under Platte River’ s ownership than is usual with private equity, but in 2025 it started looking for an exit. Various strategic and financial bidders were interested before Windjammer Capital, a national private equity investment firm based in California and Massachusetts that invests control equity in middle-market businesses, emerged as the winner.
MFG’ s headquarters site at Dalton, Georgia
“ We were impressed by their mission of helping all their portfolio companies to be the best they can be while letting the leadership get on with their jobs,” Turgeon says. Being acquired early on in Windjammer’ s fifth fund was also advantageous, he adds; MFG gained access to its owner’ s full investment acuity from the outset.
AP Tech was the first acquisition under Windjammer’ s ownership, but Turgeon is sure there will be more, given Windjammer’ s resources and appetite for acquisitions.“ There are several other possibilities in our sights, in water or coatings,” he says.“ We like to go for companies with similar general attributes to AP and our previous buys, who already have great teams and strong capabilities that we can add value to.”
More of the same?
The water treatment market, Standish says,“ moves in lockstep with GDP and industry”, with the caveat that the complexity of treating water has grown dramatically in recent years. This is the result of many external factors: regulatory requirements such as Zero Liquid Discharge, the need to use less water in cooling systems, increasing cycles of concentration, and to ensure that industrial water use does not impinge on potable water needs.
MFG’ s growth and diversification has been driven in large part by the need to address this complexity and the results it has produced, like higher concentration ratios of contamination per cycle. This means that more specialised, high performance additives and formulations, more technical service and application knowledge, developing capabilities beyond chemistry like testing, and much more.
“ I believe we are on the precipice of another inflection point in water treatment,” Standish says.“ It could come from legislation, from certain countries or regions restricting water use or from practical restraints like cost leading people to use less water.”
Data centres are a hot button topic right now in North America and Europe. Their insatiable appetite for water has become a political issue but they also require closed water systems and high levels of treatment. For MFG, this is already opening up opportunities where it has strong IP around corrosion inhibition, Turgeon says.
Both men see the ongoing pressures of the last ten to 15 years continuing and amplifying. The market will be driven by the need for new technologies, service capabilities and IP for a world that has to manage water more carefully and intelligently. Purification through ion exchange and more specialised chemistries will be part of that mix. Above all, partnership with customers will be essential.
“ MFG does not just make chemicals, it works with customers to identify issues and the best approaches to address technical challenges,” Standish says.“ Sometimes it’ s chemistry, sometimes it’ s not. It night be a change of process, a change of equipment or a different approach altogether, backed by our innovative pipeline of technologies.” ●
Mike Standish
VP, WATER ADDITIVES
MFG WATER TECHNOLOGIES
J j mike. standish @ mfgchemical. com www. mfgchemical. com
NOV / DEC 2026 SPECCHEMONLINE. COM
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