Advanced Coatings, Kapco's Kacmarcik Purchase Oshkosh Facility

After hearing that a competitor was shuttering its operations in a strategic location, executives from Advanced Coatings Inc. elected to purchase an Oshkosh facility to expand its precision painting business.

ACI, based in West Bend, specializes in military coatings and is run by Jim Kacmarcik, who also is president of metal fabrication company Kapco Inc. in Grafton and collegiate summer league baseball team the Lakeshore Chinooks, as well as founder of SpeedKore Performance Group. He's also a local investor in the Milwaukee Bucks.

Advanced Coatings works closely with prominent military vehicle builder Oshkosh Corp., and that partnership motivated Kacmarcik and ACI to buy the Oshkosh facility of Pioneer Metal Finishing, a Green Bay company that was planning to lay off more than 50 workers as it closed its coating location.

Instead, between 45 and 50 former Pioneer employees now work for ACI in the same location following ACI's purchase of the location's assets for an undisclosed amount in September. Kacmarcik met with the employees ACI retained and said that he was pleasantly surprised by the talented, hard-working group.

"We’ve got a tremendously strong base of employees there we look to grow from," Kacmarcik said.

While Kacmarcik was happy to be able to employ so many people that were slated to lose their jobs, he clarified that this wasn't only a "knight in shining armor" purchase. The connection with Oshkosh Corp. was a huge driver behind the acquisition, which he called "opportunistic."

"It was a somewhat easy decision to overnight be able to expand our ability to serve clients," Kacmarcik said.

The size of the facility was a significant upgrade for ACI as well. According to Kacmarcik, while ACI's West Bend facility spans between 45,000 and 50,000 square feet, its new Oshkosh location is roughly twice that size.

Kacmarcik added that ACI has been operating in the Oshkosh facility since mid-October and has upgraded much of the manufacturing equipment.

"It’s been transformed significantly already," he said.

The Oshkosh facility also came equipped with an "e-coating" line, which produces a "first step" primer in the coating process, according to Kacmarcik. ACI's West Bend facility doesn't have one of those and Kacmarcik said it was a process that the company previously had to outsource.

"That was one of the interesting reasons we moved forward," he said. "That’s a new business piece that Advanced Coatings is now in a position to go look for clients."

The facility served several miscellaneous purposes for Pioneer, but Kacmarcik said it will now contribute specifically to ACI's core clients, especially Oshkosh Corp.

"Our focus is going to be more tightened up," he said.