Released on April 1, 2008

The Sanmar Group, Chennai, India, acquired steel metalcaster Matrix Metals LLC, Richmond, Texas, on March 31.

Matrix, a portfolio company of Jefferies Capital Partners, New York, supplies steel castings for flow control, locomotive, mining, farm equipment, heavy construction and oilfield applications out of its facilities in Richmond, Houston, Keokuk, Iowa, and San Juan del Rio, Mexico. The company pours castings up to 8,500 lbs., closed FY 2007 with sales of $157 million, up 10% over 2006, and employs nearly 1,300. Matrix’s Houston-based NEPCO unit has outsourced some of its castings through Sanmar, an industrial, shipping and engineering conglomerate, for several years.

“We are convinced that Matrix joining with Sanmar will create one of the leading specialty steel casting groups in the world,” said Roger Courtney, CEO of Matrix and president of the company’s Keokuk Foundry.

Sanmar is currently investing more than $26 million to expand annual capacity at its steel casting facility in southern India from 10,000 to 30,000 tons by adding three automated sand casting lines. The group’s steel metalcasting business also includes an investment facility in India with capacity of 1,200 tons. The company’s first foreign metalcaster acquisition was Eisenwerk Erla GmbH, a German producer of castings used in the manufacture of turbo charger housings, in 2007. This facility, together with a greenfield site in Chennai intended to produce iron alloy castings, will serve the company’s automotive customers.

“The combination of world class steel and iron [metalcasting facilities] across three continents places the Sanmar Group in a pre-eminent position,” said P Natarajan, managing director of Sanmar’s global metals business. “We now offer 60,000 tons per annum of steel casting capacity and 50,000 tons per annum of premium iron alloy casting capacity to our customers around the world.”