Private Equity Professional

Trinity Hunt Partners has formed Steadpoint Industrial Services, a new industrial maintenance and repair platform, through an investment in Northline Industrial, a Michigan-based repairer of factory robots and other production equipment, marking the first institutional capital for the founder-owned business. Northline Industrial fixes the machines that keep factories moving.

Lafayette Instrument, a portfolio company of Branford Castle Partners, has acquired Avisoft Bioacoustics, a German maker of ultrasonic microphones and recording software researchers use to capture animal calls pitched above human hearing. The acquisition is the sixth add-on for the life sciences instrumentation platform since Branford’s second fund acquired Lafayette in 2021.

Automation is no longer simply an efficiency initiative for private equity operations; it is increasingly becoming a strategic and value creation imperative. For years, PE sponsors approached automation through a reactive lens by replacing aging equipment, while investing to improve throughput, expand capacity, or upskill labor as new needs arose.

Private equity investors are asking harder questions than they were a few years ago. Knowing that a portfolio beat public markets is no longer enough. Boards, CIOs, and investment committees now want to know what produced the result and whether it can be repeated. Was the return earned through manager selection? Strategy allocation? The timing of when capital went to work? Or did the market simply do the heavy lifting?

Industrial Growth Partners has agreed to sell Prince & Izant to TransDigm Group for just less than $1.1 billion. Headquartered in Cleveland, Prince & Izant designs and manufactures brazing alloys and specialty metal components used in parts that cannot be allowed to fail.

Tinicum has acquired GracoRoberts, a distributor of specialty chemicals and composites used in the aerospace and defense industry, from CM Equity Partners. GracoRoberts supplies the adhesives, sealants, coatings, composites, and other specialty chemicals that aircraft and defense manufacturers use to build and maintain their products.

Matrix Adhesives Group, a portfolio company of TruArc Partners, has acquired IPS Adhesives from IPS Corporation. IPS Adhesives makes high-performance adhesives — the industrial glues that hold manufactured products together — for the building and construction, transportation, industrial, and marine industries.

LLCP has held the final closing of LLCP Lower Middle Market IV LP (LMM IV) with $2.0 billion of total capital commitments. The fund was oversubscribed, surpassing its $1.7 billion target and closing at its hard cap. LLCP began marketing LMM IV in December 2025 and drew support from its existing investor base as well as a new group of institutional investors from around the world.

Bluestone Investment Partners has acquired Delphinus Engineering, a Pennsylvania-based firm that repairs, modernizes, and extends the service life of U.S. Navy ships. Delphinus’ engineers and waterfront crews maintain, repair, and modernize surface ships, aircraft carriers, and submarines; install upgraded combat and mechanical systems; and provide sustainment — the ongoing work of keeping equipment operational across a vessel’s decades-long service life.

RF Investment Partners has exited Ally Waste Services, a Phoenix-based provider of doorstep trash and recycling collection for apartment communities, ending a partnership that began in 2022 and included 12 add-on acquisitions. Ally Waste Services runs a valet-trash service that has become a standard amenity at professionally managed apartments.