CRYSTAL LAKE – Parent company Emerson has sold Crystal Lake-based Knaack LLC to a Pennsylvania company for $115 million, but it wasn’t immediately clear how the deal might affect local employees.
Knaack, which makes job site storage equipment and tool boxes for trucks and vans, has a 450,000-square-foot facility at 420 E. Terra Cotta Ave. with 285 employees.
No layoffs were planned, said Emerson spokesman Mark Polzin.
Emerson, a technology and engineering company based in St. Louis, announced the sale of Knaack to Werner Co. on Friday. Werner Co., based in Greenville, Pa., makes and distributes ladders and climbing and safety equipment.
“We are proud to join the Werner family,” Knaack President Frank Carroll said in a press release. “Our category leading products combined with Werner’s market leadership creates an opportunity to provide enhanced service and expanded offerings to our customers.”
A voice message left for William Zbylut, Knaack’s vice president of marketing, wasn’t returned Monday.
Werner plans to keep Knaack in Crystal Lake, said Angie Maddox, of Seed Factory Marketing, on behalf of Werner.
“Initially the organizations will be run separately,” she wrote in an email to the Northwest Herald. “Werner will evaluate synergies across the companies over time and the goal will be to integrate the organizations to provide the professional segment with the best brands, product and service levels in the industry.”
Knaack “will continue to manufacture out of its facility in Crystal Lake” and “will be able to leverage shipping points from various Werner locations,” Maddox said.
Emerson purchased Knaack in 2000. The company had been planning to sell Knaack for several months, Polzin said. He called the sale of Knaack to Werner a “great strategic fit.”
Knaack started here in 1960 and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010. It makes storage chests, workstations, rolling workbenches and hand tool boxes with the Knaack logo. It also sells truck and van equipment under the Weather Guard brand.
All three product lines – Knaack job site boxes, Weather Guard truck boxes and Weather Guard van storage units – are made in Crystal Lake.