Erickson Framing joins the Atlas family.
We are pleased to announce that Atlas has acquired Erickson Framing through our newly formed company, Erickson Framing Holdings LLC. Erickson Framing was acquired from Masco Corporation, a global producer of home improvement and building products. Erickson is a leading construction services and pre-fabricated building products company that provides turn-key framing services, framing packages, trusses and other products to builders and developers. Erickson’s primary geographic markets include Arizona, Northern California and the greater Reno, NV area. Erickson offers a unique value proposition, operating its own lumber and panelization yards, in which wall panels and trusses are pre-fabricated, in Chandler, AZ and Roseville, CA.
In 1975, Phil Erickson founded Erickson as a framer for major homebuilders in Phoenix, AZ. In 1986, Erickson acquired a Phoenix truss facility to complement its framing operations. In 1996, Erickson started its Northern California operation, offering the same wall panel and truss capabilities as Arizona. As Erickson grew through the 1990’s, it transitioned from traditional stick-framing – a process whereby framers construct walls from lumber delivered to the construction site – to panelized framing, the current process utilized by Erickson whereby wall panels are constructed in a factory setting and transported to the construction site for installation. The benefits of factory pre-construction of framed panel components are (i) lower total cost resulting from less waste and tighter management of labor inputs, (ii) higher and more consistent quality and (iii) quicker cycle-time for home builders. Erickson was acquired by Masco in 2007.
This acquisition reflects Atlas’ investment strategy of purchasing and successfully transitioning divisions of a larger corporate parent into strong, independent companies. Our decade of experience in the building materials segment through our investments in Wood Resources, RedBuilt and Bridgewell strengthens our confidence in this acquisition. While Erickson has struggled through the long and deep downturn in the residential construction industry, it successfully maintained its presence and significantly increased its market share through that period. We believe the acquisition is timely, given the growing evidence of improvement in residential construction. We also believe there will be a number of opportunities to realize synergies among the Atlas companies engaged in the construction and building materials market.
We are excited about acquiring Erickson and welcoming their employees into the Atlas family.