Sometimes that’s not the case. But with Alpha Technologies’ purchase of Metravib Material Testing that really seems to be the truth six months after the contracts were signed.

Hudson-based Alpha is one of the global leaders in rheology testing instrumentation. But with the acquisition of French firm Metravib, Alpha expands its global capabilities into dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and fatigue testing.

“This acquisition underscores our commitment to deliver the most comprehensive and reliable material testing solutions available,” Alpha President and CEO Neil Friery said in a statement when the deal was announced last June. “Combining Metravib’s technologies and expertise with our own enables us to support critical customer needs with even greater precision.”

The Hudson-based firm purchased Metravib Material Testing from Limonest, France-based Acoem Group, a producer of AI-powered sensors and systems.

The combination, Alpha said, “creates an unmatched portfolio of material testing solutions, including rheology, DMA, viscoelastic property characterization, failure analysis, fatigue performance evaluation and thermo-mechanical analysis.”

“We were pretty excited,” Jayson Humble, Alpha vice president of sales and marketing, told Rubber News. “Anytime we see an opportunity, we ask ourselves, ‘Should we do this or should we look to see if there’s another way to fulfill that customer need?’

“In the case of the Metrovib acquisition, it came together between us and the parent company, Acoem, where it filled a need in our portfolio, and the business wasn’t totally strategically aligned with what they were doing. So it was a great fit.”

Acoem CEO Fabien Condemine said the move is a testament to the renowned expertise his firm had cultivated within the DMA sector.

“Recognizing this strong foundation, we are confident that Alpha Technologies, with its deep understanding of the materials analysis market and extensive international presence, provides the ideal environment for it to thrive and achieve its full potential,” Condemine said in a statement. “This strategic decision also enables Acoem to further strengthen our focus on our core business of environmental and reliability solutions.”

It pays to have connections

Alpha’s Friery said deals come about in a variety of ways. Sometimes sellers will take their assets to auctions, while other times sales develop organically through business relationships in the marketplace.

In this case, particularly with the relative small size of the testing instrumentation sector, he said through Alpha’s connections they were able to meet each other and start the acquisition process.

“We knew that Acoem is a large organization that had a lot of experience in material testing,“ Friery told Rubber News. “They had evolved their portfolio more into environmental monitoring, and they were kind of moving away from material testing.

“They wanted to exit a line of business to put their strategic focus in other lines, and they knew that we were a highly capable partner, and I think they thought they could ‘betroth their daughter’ to us and know that it was in good hands.”

At the end of the day, he said the range and breadth of Metrvib’s portfolio in DMA testing capabilities helps Alpha round out its offerings.

“For being a relatively small organization similar to Alpha, they have a global presence. They operate with customers in all the major regions that you would expect out of their France-based facility,” Friery said. “We really believe that from a service capability perspective that this was going to help us, as they have service capability, and we have service capability.

“And in this business, our customers are wanting and desiring as fast of a connection and level of service to their products on a daily basis. So their service capabilities help us with that.”

But there also is some crossover with like customers operating in like spaces of the industry. That helps Alpha expand its testing capabilities into other areas of the market—such as plastics and composites—where the U.S. firm wanted more penetration, but would find it difficult to achieve on its own.

“I would say that those spaces are, typically speaking if you look back over time and if you look at projections going forward, growing slightly faster, more than just automotive, tire and rubber, where people think of a lot when they think of Alpha,” Friery said.

Not that Alpha is looking to shift away from the rubber and tire market. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

“We still see opportunity to serve the rubber industry’s needs more.” Humble said. “I think it’s always going to be core for us because the industry has unique needs that we’re uniquely built to serve.”

He added that as the integration progresses further, Alpha will look to service these like customers with one salesperson and one service engineer.

“So if a service engineer comes in to service an Alpha product in the future, it will also service the Metravib product there,” he said, “so it’s going to increase our responsiveness to our customers, which is key.”

So far, so good

The Alpha executives said the integration of the Metravib business has gone well, both with external and internal audiences.

Humble said that prior to the deal closing, they sought insight from some key customers, explaining what was in the pipeline. And the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

“They were really excited,” according to Humble. “They said, ‘We love working with both of you. And if I’m going to get better service, faster service, if you guys foresee integrating your software together in a way that is going to better fulfill my needs, that’s great.’

“So that was always good, because you sometimes wonder if you’re going to get a negative customer response, and we certainly didn’t get that.”

From an internal perspective, six months into the integration all is progressing well, Friery said.

“I think from a people perspective, right now we’ve been able to retain the key people in the business,” he added. ”And I think we found overall, from a cultural perspective, we’re meshing well."

Alpha’s U.S.-based officials have been traveling to help with the process, and there also are in-region resources who are providing support, both from Alpha but also its parent company, Indicor.

Besides integrating in the leadership team, Friery said work also is underway to migrate Alpha’s CRM systems into the Metravib business so everyone will be working off the same platform.

Over time, everything will be branded under the Alpha Technologies moniker, though Humble said the Metravib DMA name will be retained for a period of time because of the positive association with the brand.

Friery said there is much to accomplish over the next year, but at the top of the “to-do list” will be training the service engineers so they are well-versed in working on both product lines.

“That fast response time to the customer is paramount to the success in this space,“ the Alpha president said. ”One thing that actually really differentiates us today from our competition is that we’re able to deliver service at a much higher level than any of our competitors in the marketplace.”

Also high on the priority list is cross-pollinating the sales teams from the two organizations, so they too can fully represent the Alpha and Metravib lines. Humble said this is key because of Alpha’s clear intent to go to market as one team, with both sides bringing positive assets to the table.

“Metravib brought many channel partners with them for the way they went to market, and they’re actually teaching us a couple of things about how to better manage our channel partners,” Humble said. “They’ve got some great channel partners, and we intend to extend those relationships.”