Who we are
Permanent ownership · A home for your business
Westbruk is a holding company built to acquire and operate small manufacturing and distribution businesses. At Westbruk, we buy small industrial companies, let them continue running largely as they were, and hold onto them forever. We welcome owners or their number-twos to continue operating the business, if they wish.
We founded Westbruk to give owners like you a better option than a financial buyer who will turn around and sell your business in five years. We are not a private equity firm. We have no fund and no intention of ever selling what we buy. When your business joins Westbruk, your employees keep their jobs, your name stays on the door, and your customers keep buying the same products from the same people. The culture you built stays intact, because that's what made the business worth buying in the first place.
Our goal is to provide an exit you can be proud of and a smooth transition for your employees.
Our founders — Matt Kaelberer and Eric Heideman — bring complementary backgrounds investing in and operating industrial businesses. Matt spent nearly a decade investing in publicly traded industrial companies around the world and has seen hundreds of them up close. Eric is a certified accountant and a seasoned business operator with 15 years of experience in the oil and gas sector. He has bought, grown, and sold several businesses and intimately understands the friction owners experience while selling their business.
Most importantly, we’re business owners too, and we’re building Westbruk to be the type of buyer we’d want to sell to.
How we compare
| Westbruk | Private Equity | Individual SBA Buyer | Strategic Buyer | Search Fund | Family Office | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent ownership | ✓ | ✗ | Sometimes | ✓ | ✗ | Sometimes |
| Focus on long-term performance over quarterly results | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Operational experience | ✓ | Sometimes | Sometimes | ✓ | ✗ | Sometimes |
| Decentralized / local decision-making | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Sometimes |
| Brand & legacy preservation | ✓ | Sometimes | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fast, straightforward LOI and diligence process | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Sometimes | Sometimes |
| Seller note, earnout, or rollover required | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | Sometimes | ✓ | Sometimes |
| Financing contingency in the LOI | ✗ | Sometimes | ✓ | ✗ | Sometimes | ✗ |
| Forced synergies | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mass layoffs | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Facility consolidation / closure | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | Sometimes |
We know you have plenty of buyers to choose from. We'd welcome the chance to show you how we stack up.
What we look for
Companies with…
- Proprietary products, specialized manufacturing, or distribution businesses with deep customer relationships and technical expertise — ideally the leading name in a narrow niche
- Owners who are thinking about succession and care about what happens to their business and employees after they sell
- Revenue of $2M–$20M with EBITDA between $500K and $5M
- Track record of consistent margins through economic cycles
- Boring and stable products that have stood the test of time
- An owner-operator or family ownership structure, with longtime employees and a culture worth protecting
* A strong second-in-command or management team capable of leading day-to-day operations is a plus, though not a requirement.
Our team
- CPA with 7 years of experience as a public accountant
- Track record of successfully buying, operating, and improving small industrial businesses in the oil and gas sector
- Experience selling businesses to both private equity and public strategic buyers
- Devoted father of five, distance runner, and occasionally opinionated youth soccer coach
- Nearly a decade analyzing and investing in public industrial companies around the world
- Expert on the permanent holding company model Westbruk is built on
- Hundreds of conversations with CEOs of industrial businesses
- Fly fisherman, water-skier, and private pilot who tries to visit a new country every year
Our name
A brief explanation of our name
"Bruk" is a Swedish word for an industrial site — historically an ironworks, sawmill, or paper mill that anchored a town. Many of these bruks have been operating for centuries, passed down through families and generations of workers. They are some of the best examples we know of what patient, permanent industrial ownership looks like.
That tradition lives on today in a small group of publicly traded Swedish "compounders" that have spent decades acquiring small industrial businesses and holding them indefinitely. They give each company the autonomy to keep running the way it always has, free from corporate bureaucracy and run by the people who know the business best. They are some of the most successful companies in Europe, and we think their model offers an enduring home for small businesses. We built Westbruk to bring that philosophy to America.
The "Bruk" is our nod to this heritage. The "West" reflects where we sit, far west of Sweden, where we're building a company with the same patience and long view in mind.
Contact Us
Even if selling is the last thing on your mind, we'd love to introduce ourselves. The best relationships we build start long before any transaction. When you're ready to sell, we have capital ready and can move quickly. Reach out anytime and we'll do a brief call or take you to lunch.