Upfront: TecumsehPower sells assets from engine business to Certified Parts Corporation

By Steve Noe

As we were about to go to press with this issue of Outdoor Power Equipment (OPE), the long-awaited news finally came from TecumsehPower Company on Feb 10.

Five days after selling its Peerless transmissions business to Husqvarna Outdoor Products, Grafton, Wis.-based TecumsehPower announced that it sold certain assets of its engine business to Certified Parts Corporation (CPC), headquartered in Janesville, Wis.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. However, the deal included the sale of existing and unfinished engine parts inventory, tools to make finished product, and certain intellectual property assets. CPC will also assume the warranty obligations of the engine business.

“We have again sought and found a solution that preserves the commitment we made to our customers,” said Rudolf Strobl, president and CEO of TecumsehPower Company. “We are proud to have found a way forward that ensures all warranty obligations are met and provides long-term parts and service support into the future.”

TecumsehPower will continue to own certain real estate and other assets, as well as provide some services to CPC under a transition services agreement for a limited period of time.

Since this story is so late breaking, I don’t know much about CPC outside of what I read on the company’s Web site and in a Feb. 10 article from The Janesville Gazette. On the “About Us” page on CPC’s Web site, it reads as follows:

“Certified Parts Corporation was founded in 1976 to meet the growing demand for obsolete new/old replacement parts. Certified Parts Corporation (CPC) strives to maintain hard-to-find new/old replacement parts for out-of-production recreational vehicles such as snowmobiles, personal watercraft, go-karts, mini cycles and more. In addition to OEM parts, CPC carries a wide variety of aftermarket parts. Our commitment and goal is to continue to expand our product lines based on the needs and demands of our customers. For 30 years, Certified Parts Corporation has been supplying new/old OEM and aftermarket parts to recreational enthusiasts.”

In the aforementioned article in The Janesville Gazette, CPC Owner Jim Grafft said that he plans to move the engine operation to Rock County, Wis., where he owns three facilities in Janesville and one in Edgerton, and will initially supply parts for TecumsehPower engines. Grafft also said that his company could eventually resume engine production, which TecumsehPower ceased in December 2008, but that he would need about 200,000 square feet of space, which is the size of his Edgerton facility.

Based on my limited knowledge of CPC, I believe that this acquisition will be good for the OPE industry — at least from a Tecumseh engine parts distribution standpoint — which is a sentiment shared by our very own Anonymous Distributor.

“I’m glad to see Certified Parts buy TecumsehPower,” said the Anonymous Distributor. “There’s something comforting about a proven national parts distributor for recreational equipment buying TecumsehPower assets to get into the Tecumseh parts business. They should be very good at parts distribution, and Tecumseh engine end users and service centers should benefit.”

OPE Editor Steve Noe
snoe@m2media360.com