Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/24949
When W.R. Grace sold TEC Systems to Sequa Corporation in 1997, Sequa combined TEC with a French company called MEG (Materiels Equipements Graphiques) and created MEGTEC Systems, headquartered in De Pere. Fiers stayed on at the new company as president and asked Uberoi to come along to help develop an emissions control business at MEGTEC. “I talked to my wife, Arti, and told her about this opportunity, except we would have to move to Wisconsin,” says Uberoi. “We thought it would be for a couple of years only, but it would be a great chance for me to expand my “We gave Mohit and his staff nine months to get this done. They did it in eight months and some odd days, and it was up and running right the first time out. The funny thing is, we had problems with every single piece of equipment in that plant except for MEGTEC’s.” — Tom Dougherty experience. I was interested in creating and developing businesses, like my father did.” A couple of years have turned into 13 and Uberoi has become embedded in a world he thought he would only be visiting for a short time. He’s active in the Appleton community and their three children attend the Classical School, where he is president of the board. Along the way, Uberoi also succeeded Fiers as president and CEO of MEGTEC in 2003. MEGTEC has expanded globally, with manufacturing, sales and service operations in Shanghai, Singapore, Australia, India, France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but world headquarters remains on Prosper Drive in De Pere. Te company holds more than 100 patents and employs more than 700 – about half of them in the United States. Te De Pere operation employs about 350. “In Europe, we’ve grown primarily through acquisitions,” says Uberoi, “buying companies and incorporating them into the MEGTEC portfolio, but in Asia it’s been all greenfield – all from the ground up. We’ve bought the land, hired the employees, built the factories. And we’ve done that because we recognized that to provide products and service to those markets, we had to be there. It would not be feasible to ship our products, which are quite large, from De Pere to China, for example.” In 2008, Sequa sold MEGTEC to a group of investors, including Hamilton Robinson Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Connecticut. At the time of the purchase, Hamilton Robinson officials said MEGTEC would remain a stand-alone company with no major change in management structure or day-to-day business operations. “We have been very impressed with the performance and track record of MEGTEC under Mohit Uberoi and his management team, and look forward to working with them to further develop the business,” Hamilton Robinson managing partner Scott Oakford said at the time of the acquisition. Culture of innovation as well. Uberoi notes that the company has 14 engineering solutions centers globally and that staff regularly network with one another to exchange experience and ideas. Most important, he says, M www. insightonbusiness .com Februar y 2011 • INSIGHT | 29 EGTEC is getting a lot of attention now for its lithium-ion battery technology process, but the company has been an innovation leader in other industries