How A Massachusetts-based Company is Helping to Revitalize American Manufacturing

An interview with Anthony Manzo, Co-Founder and EVP of Corporate Development at Re:Build Manufacturing

In 2020, as the world was reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, Anthony Manzo and colleagues launched their idea: build a company that would buy up small and medium-sized manufacturers and drive excess growth by deploying cutting-edge enabling technologies.

Re:Build Manufacturing, based in Massachusetts, was born. In just two years, the company has raised $425 million in committed capital and is well on its way to becoming a major player in the American manufacturing landscape.

I recently talked to Manzo via Zoom about his company, its strategy, and where he sees the future of American Manufacturing headed.

He started with the people that have been the force behind the company’s success.

“We are a group of individuals with expertise in engineering, operations and private market investing” he said, adding that this mix of skills and experience is key to the company’s success.

“[We] saw an opportunity to pursue a strategy of acquiring industrial technology companies and domestic manufacturing businesses, supercharging the manufacturers via infusing the technology to make them more competitive globally,” he added.

Manzo says Re:Build Manufacturing is not a “typical private equity” firm that just wants to buy companies, make short-term changes, and sell them off in 4-5 years. Instead, the goal is to make structural changes that will help them continuing growing for decades.

“Our businesses work with customers in a lot of different ways,” he said. “We can design and contract manufacture components. We can build plants for them. We have multiple automation offerings that can build one-off bespoke equipment to full-scale automation processes and even entire plants for companies.”

It’s this kind of thinking that has allowed Re:Build Manufacturing to thrive while other companies have struggled. Manzo says his company has closed nine acquisitions in the last 13 months and is on track to do more.

“We’re investing more into the cost structure of those businesses than what they had to date because we’re positioning them to accelerate growth,” he said, adding that his company is focused on the long-term. In 5-10 years, he said, “these companies are going to grow at a much greater rate than what their underlying markets are [doing].”

Tell us what you think on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter! @opusconnect.

By Lou Sokolovskiy, Founder & CEO at Opus Connect
May 2022[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]