Skip to content
Business

Philly-based construction supplier Unified Door raises Wall St. cash to to go national

Unified Door & Hardware, a 500-worker, South Jersey-based firm which has bought a string of East Coast commercial door firms, has attracted new capital from a New York private-equity firm and its backers

Unified Door & Hardware has bought other firms along the East Coast
Unified Door & Hardware has bought other firms along the East CoastRead moreUnified Door & Hardware

Unified Door & Hardware Group, LLC a Pennsauken-based, 500-worker company that supplied doors for Comcast headquarters, and has been buying up door finishers and distributors along the East Coast, has sold a majority stake to building-supply investor Dunes Point Capital L.P., of Rye, N.Y.

The deal was financed by Blackstone Group’s GSO Capital Partners LP funding unit and M&T Bank. Terms weren’t disclosed. Dunes, headed by Tim White, a former Blackstone managing directors, buys companies worth up to $500 million.

Unified managers, who bought the company after the 2012 death of Lawrence Ciletti of Moorestown, founder of predecessor Tru-Fit Hardware in Palmyra, N.J., in 1972, ″will still own a significant portion," and will continue to run the firm, said Michael Mufson, managing director in the Philadelphia investment bank Mufson Howe Hunter & Co. Ltd., which represented Unified in the deal.

Dunes Point also owns Harvey Building Products, Waltham, Mass., a residential-doors distributor, which last fall purchased Northeast Building Products and its vinyl-window and home door factories in Northeast Philadelphia.

There have been a string of mergers and spin-offs in the building-supply business. For example, Michigan-based Masco Corp. said earlier this year it is looking for buyers for its commercial window businesses.

Besides True-Fit, Unified Door, which has 15 distribution centers in 10 states, also owns Halpern & Sons, in the New Brunswick area; Philadelphia-based Liberty Door Systems, which has made doors for Drexel and Villanova; Next Door Distribution, in Florida; Hudson Valley Door & Hardware and Weinstein & Holtzman, New York; and Prevent Security & Technology, New Castle, Del., among other brands.