By Susan A. Baird
PBN Web Editor
SMITHFIELD – Peter Palmisciano, owner and president of P&C Quality Turned Components Inc., has sold the precision components manufacturer to manufacturing-focused investors group PSP LLC. The purchase price was not disclosed.
The transaction closed last Friday, Feb. 1, according to Sam Mukarkar, who founded PSP with partners Paul Taveira and Paul Warren. The investors were assisted by a $500,000 loan from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s Small Business Revolving Loan Fund, for which The Washington Trust Co. served as lender.
“We’d been doing our due diligence for months,” Mukarkar told Providence Business News in a telephone interview today. PSP learned about the machine shop through Robert Flynn, managing partner of Bridge Business Brokers, who also has informed them of a number of other opportunities, he said.
“We’ve got another acquisition lined up we’re hoping to close on next week,” and a third potential deal is also in the pipeline, he said One of those is with a company “that will really complement what we’re doing here” at the former P&C – now PSP LLC, doing business as Precision Source.
The investors’ group plans to retain Palmisciano as a member of the management team, and also will be keeping the rest of P&C’s 14 employees, Murkarkar said.
“A lot of them have been here 20 years plus, and they’re excited,” he said. “They’re out there cleaning up the work space, and fixing things up” – along with the new owners, who he said plan to at the Maple Street shop this weekend, filling up the Dumpster. They’ve already ordered new computers from Dell and arranged for expanded telephone and Internet service, he said. “I did that right away, this Monday.”
The trio brings decades of high-level experience to their new enterprise. Mukarkar, who lives in coastal New Hampshire, had previously been vice president of sales at Thorofare, N.J.-based Aramsco, and a member of the team responsible for integrating mergers and acquisitions. Taveira – who lives in southeastern Massachusetts, as does Warren – had been based in Providence, as president of the environmental business of Houston-based Philips Service Co. Warren had been general manager of precision medical products at Quincy, Mass.-based Boston Scientific.
“We all decided to get out of the corporate life,” Mukarkar said, explaining the venture’s genesis. “Paul Taveira and myself traveled weekly, leaving on Monday morning and trying to get back Friday night. …We’d been doing it for years. …
“We just got tired of working for corporate America, and wanted to do something locally.” Now, he said, “There’s a high level of enthusiasm.”
Mukarkar said he even enjoys his two-hour drive to work each morning – whereas before, he dreaded heading back to the airport.
“This is our core focus – turning this company around, creating jobs, creating revenue.”
The three investors and Palmisciano also may be doing some consulting, Mukarkar said. “We’ve been approached by some other people to come in and help them turn around.” But that will be a sideline.
“I think the quality of what we can produce is a lot higher than in, say, China. … I think we can be competitive,” partly by bringing in new technology, “and can also give them the quality and the service level. … And with the size of the company, you see results right away.”
