In September 2022, an industrial business changed hands without becoming a household name. AZZ put its infrastructure division into a joint venture, sold Fernweh Group a 60 percent stake, and kept 40 percent. The whole operation carried an implied enterprise value of $300 million. Its new name was Avail Infrastructure Solutions. Its products included switchgear, electrical enclosures and bus ducts. Dinner-party material, perhaps, for a very particular dinner party.
On May 1, 2025, nVent completed its purchase of Avail’s Electrical Products Group for $975 million, subject to customary adjustments. One part of the business now commanded a price well above the earlier valuation of the whole. Those figures describe different assets at different moments, with financing and subsequent investment between them. They are no shortcut to calculating Fernweh’s return. They do, however, make a good reason to pay attention.
- Buys industrial businesses and helps run them.
- Uses control stakes, partnerships and minority investments.
- Avail’s electrical division sold for $975 million in 2025.
The engineer behind the investment
Fernweh, founded in 2021 and based in San Jose, California, occupies the territory between industrial private equity and operational consulting. It takes ownership positions and brings management expertise into the companies it backs. The buyer and the improvement team arrive together. That arrangement matters when an owner needs both money and help deciding what to do with it.
Co-founder Nick Santhanam came to investing through chemical engineering, manufacturing jobs and McKinsey, where he led the global industrials practice. In an interview about The Titanium Economy, the 2022 book he co-authored, he recalled working on manufacturing lines while computer programming captured the imagination. Useful companies were shipping useful things. Outside their industries, few people seemed to recognize their names.
That experience helps explain Fernweh’s taste. The firm looks for industrial expertise that already exists, then asks how ownership, management and technology could make better use of it. Its current team page identifies Santhanam as co-founder and chairman. The proposition has an engineer’s practical bias: start with something that works, inspect its constraints, and change the system around it.
What happened inside Avail
The original transaction gave AZZ room to concentrate on metal coatings while retaining an interest in the infrastructure business. AZZ expected roughly $228 million in cash proceeds. Its subsequent filing described approximately $108 million plus $120 million funded by debt taken on by the joint venture. The structure put real financing obligations alongside the operating opportunity.
Avail then expanded. In 2024 it acquired WASP Critical Power & Equipment Solutions, adding low-voltage switchgear capabilities serving data centers, electric vehicle infrastructure and renewable energy. Here was a concrete move behind the transformation language: extend the product range into applications where customers needed more electrical capacity.
By the time nVent announced its acquisition, Electrical Products Group had approximately 1,100 employees and nine US manufacturing locations. nVent estimated about $375 million in revenue for the twelve months ending February 2025. Its attraction was specific: control buildings, switchgear and bus systems serving utilities and data centers, with established customers and an installed base.
The remaining businesses found new owners too. Avail announced the WSI welding business sale to Pelican Energy Partners in January 2026, retaining South American operations. Rig-A-Lite’s sale to Phoenix Lighting closed in May. Read together, these transactions show a platform being separated into businesses with distinct industrial homes.
Implied enterprise value of the AZZ infrastructure business. Fernweh takes 60%.
nVent’s purchase price for EPG, subject to customary adjustments.
From airport gates to window frames
Fernweh’s other investments make the market position easier to picture. In July 2022, it acquired Cavotec’s airports business, Dabico Airport Solutions; Cavotec received €13 million in cash consideration. Dabico supplies the unglamorous necessities around aircraft: ground power, cooling, fueling equipment and boarding bridges. Its published customer list includes Heathrow Airport, Lufthansa and Fraport.
Wincore, whose acquisition Fernweh announced in January 2025, makes vinyl windows, entry doors and patio doors. The announcement said all senior management would remain. Fernweh presented the investment as a wager on pent-up housing and renovation demand as inflation and interest-rate conditions eased. The demand thesis supplied the timing; an established manufacturer supplied the starting point.
In October 2026, Fernweh and Cynosure completed a minority investment in Lapmaster Wolters and Precision Surfacing Solutions. The company makes equipment and consumables for exacting surface finishing, including semiconductor and precision-optics applications. Planned uses of the investment included product development, sales and service expansion, and capacity. Fernweh’s industrial thesis can accommodate both a window frame and a semiconductor surface.
Ownership is part of the service
For Fernweh, the immediate counterparties are business owners and management teams. For its portfolio companies, customers are manufacturers, airports, utilities, distributors and other commercial buyers. Confusing those two layers makes the firm sound like a supplier of everything. It is an investor whose holdings sell very different things.
Its business model centers on equity investments and value creation through operating improvements, growth and acquisitions. Affiliate Mirabilis Management Company serves as investment manager. Fernweh competes for transactions with industrial buyout firms and strategic acquirers; an owner can also retain the company and hire advisers. Fernweh’s distinguishing pitch joins an ownership relationship to help with execution.
The Wabash partnership illustrates that flexibility. Announced in October 2023, the joint venture was designed to expand parts distribution and Trailers as a Service through a connected digital platform. Ayna.AI was named implementation partner. The work addressed transactions between dealers, customers and suppliers, giving the digital effort a defined commercial job.
“This marks the completion of EPG’s transformation since its acquisition in 2022 as part of Avail.”
Siddarth Madhav · March 2025
Start with the bottleneck
There is a useful lesson here for owners with no intention of selling. Identify the customer problem before commissioning the technology. Decide which capabilities to add. Keep experienced managers involved. Make the ownership and operating arrangements support the same objective. These are practical inferences from Fernweh’s deals, rather than a claim that every company should follow them.
The fit has limits. Fernweh asks for willingness to work with an engaged investor-operator and targets established platform businesses with $10 million to $50 million in EBITDA. An owner seeking complete operating independence may find the relationship uncomfortable. A product without customers needs different work. And a promising electrical market still requires factories to deliver. Fernweh’s wager is that overlooked industrial capability can become more valuable when someone gives it focused attention.