RBC Completes Acquisition of Timken Standard Plant

Roller Bearing Company of America Inc., has completed its acquisition of The Timken Company Standard Plant's aircraft bearing operations in Torrington, Connecticut.

The business is scheduled to open its doors January 5, 2004 as a new division -- RBC Aircraft Products Inc. -- using around 100,000 square feet of leased space in the Standard Plant and includes some related products from Timken's Super Precision plant in Keene, New Hampshire.

The product lines involved in the transaction tightly mesh with RBC's existing product lines. As an initial press release pointed out, RBC focuses on the kind of higher volume, catalog product made at the Standard Plant. The plant manufactures aircraft control bearings, aircraft rod ends, radial bearings and aircraft track rollers.

Timken will continue to operate its own manufacturing in other areas of the Standard Plant, employing approximately 100 people. They are involved in other types of aerospace and precision bearings, including automotive and outboard marine bearings.

With few other reasonable options available to Timken for a divestiture of the airplane bearing operations, the move is widely seen as the best possible outcome for Timken, RBC, and the Standard Plant employees.

Timken inherited the massive turn-of-the-century Torrington Standard Plant, and the Fafnir airframe bearing division housed there, when it acquired The Torrington Company from Ingersoll-Rand in early 2003. But the Standard Plant's product lines for airplanes is not a good fit with Timken's other aircraft and aerospace bearing business.

By August 2003, Timken had officially announced plans to divest the Standard Plant's aircraft bearing operations. At the time, eBearing and others began to speculate that the most logical and mutually advantageous acquirer would be RBC. Key among the reasons is the fact that many senior RBC executives had once been employed by Torrington with responsibility for various Fafnir aerospace product lines produced at the Standard Plant.

About The Author:

Dale Simens is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.bearing-n-bearings.com. Keep things running smoothly with ball bearings, roller bearings, ball thrust bearings and tapered bearings.