Meritus Gas Partners, a new packaged gas distribution platform, is formed

Gas Innovations and Atlas Welding Supply, in conjunction with a growth investment from AEA Investors’ Small Business Fund, have combined to form Meritus Gas Partners, a new packaged gas distribution platform.

Meritus intends to assemble a national federation of high-quality independent distributors of industrial, medical, and specialty gases and welding and safety supplies, located in diverse geographies and serving growing end-markets across North America.

The Meritus executive team is led by Chairman Scott Kaltrider, who has held various senior executive operating roles at Praxair Inc. over a 35+ year career which included serving as President of Praxair Distribution Inc (PDI), its packaged gas business in the US, from 2013 to 2016.

“AEA is a pioneer in the private equity industry with a sterling reputation and long track record of successfully collaborating with founders and entrepreneurs to scale their businesses,” Kaltrider said.

“Together, we see an opportunity to provide transformational capital to well-positioned businesses across the packaged gas industry. We will partner with exceptional businesses and management teams, allow them to remain independent and entrepreneurial, and support them to accelerate growth, improve business quality and enhance value. We will offer the owners the opportunity to roll over a meaningful amount of their equity into our holding company to allow them to share in the success of the overall platform. We believe this approach will resonate with owners who are seeking liquidity today but are committed to the industry and want to be part of something larger and more dynamic.”

Gas Innovations, strategically located at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel in La Porte, Texas, is a wholesale provider of high purity hydrocarbons and refrigerants as well as equipment such as tube trailers, cryogenic ISO containers, and other packages for gases to our distributors. Gas Innovations produces, purifies, packages, and distributes a wide range of high purity specialty industrial gases through a deployable asset base to customers in the US and internationally.

Gas Innovations and Atlas will continue to operate independently under their own local brands. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed.