The UD STAR campus-based design and production company ILC Dover makes another large-scale acquisition.
The private equity firm that acquired ILC Dover last year, New Mountain Capital, recently announced the acquisition of Flexan, a more than 70-year-old company based near Chicago that designs and manufacturers medical devices, with a specialty in high-precision silicone, rubber and thermoplastic components.
“It fundamentally transitions ILC Dover into a larger life sciences footprint—now including medical devices as well as the work we do in pharm and biotherapeutics,” said the company’s President and CEO Fran DiNuzzo.
In addition to its work in pharmaceuticals and biotherapeutics technologies, ILC Dover is best known for its innovation in aerospace, including the space suits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their historic 1969 Apollo mission.
DiNuzzo says that while ILC technically owns Flexan in a legal sense, the two companies will remain largely separate— with the potential for future collaboration.
“We do believe that there are some technology opportunities between the two companies—to be able to share technologies, potentially supply each other products,” he said. “We’ll get deeper into that and more of that will unfold over time.”
Neither company offered any further details regarding finances of the merger.
This is the second acquisition ILC Dover has made in about a year. It also acquired the UK company Solo Containment in 2020. DiNuzzo says ILC Dover has its sights set on continued growth in the years to come.
