BROKEN ARROW, OK — BlackHawk Industrial, a distributor of metalworking, industrial, MROP, and packaging supplies, on Friday announced the acquisition of Packaging Inc. Founded in 1957, Packaging Inc. is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Through a direct sales force, Packaging Inc. is a provider of packaging and fastening equipment and supplies to a loyal and long-standing customer base in the Midwest. With locations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, Packaging Inc. focuses on technical, value-added “outside the box” and “inside the box” packaging solutions, as well as niche fastening products. 

Packaging Inc. is the 11th acquisition of strong local industrial distributors by BlackHawk Industrial since the fall of 2010. The Packaging Inc. acquisition allows BlackHawk to deepen their technical solutions focus across a new group of product offerings in the marketplace. Packaging’s commercial management team will continue to lead the business as product category specialists within BlackHawk. On the technical side of the packaging and fastening business segment, Packaging’s expertise will help expand their efforts to grow the add-on product categories within the widening BlackHawk customer base. 

With the acquisition of Packaging Inc., BlackHawk broadens its geographical footprint and sales penetration in the Minnesota and Wisconsin marketplaces. It also allows BlackHawk to enter Iowa with a new sales location. In the near future, Packaging Inc. will expand into existing BlackHawk locations as excess warehouse space already exists. 

The first “co-located” facility will be in Omaha in Q1 2015. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Bill Scheller, CEO of BlackHawk Industrial, said: “We continue to attract and acquire the best local distributors in a given product category to become part of the business we are building in North America. 

By adding exciting ‘bolt-on' product categories requiring a technical sales approach, such as packaging and fasteners, in conjunction with the Packaging Inc. sales talent, we believe this is a pure win-win.” Mr. Scheller also added: “BlackHawk Industrial will look to the sales team from Packaging Inc. to work in partnership with our existing industrial sales team to bring a deeper set of technical solutions to our manufacturing end user customers.”