111-year Kansas City employer agrees to merge into Utah conglomerate in private deal
Kansas City-based Bartlett and Co., a local employer for more than 100 years, is merging into a Utah-based conglomerate, the companies announced Wednesday.
Terms of the deal were not released, but Bartlett is seeking "strategic alternatives" for one of its principal businesses that will not be part of the merger.
The merger will fold Bartlett with Salt Lake City-based Savage Companies to become Savage Enterprises once the transaction is completed in August. Savage has announced acquisitions of other companies in recent years, including a hazardous and nonhazardous waste removal company and a company that removes waste coal.
Savage provides services to industries including oil refinery, power generation, railroad, oil and gas, mining, fertilizer, food shipping, chemicals and construction.
Bartlett, which formed in 1907, is in the grain merchandising, cattle feeding and milling industries. It recently settled federal action stemming from a 2011 explosion at a grain elevator in Atchison, Kan., that killed six workers.
Between the two, Savage is a larger business based on its 4,000-employee count and 250 operating sites around the United States, Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Bartlett is adding 760 employees at 30 locations in the United States and Mexico to the merger.
The jobs total is down sharply from 900 employees that Forbes listed for Bartlett in the publication's 2016 ranking of privately owned companies.
Jeff Hymas, a spokesman for Savage, said Bartlett's employment total is lower in part because it had sold its smaller grain elevator operations in the last year. He said it still operates the new elevator it built in Atchison.
The merger also does not include Bartlett's cattle-feeding operations, for which Bartlett is seeking "strategic alternatives" that could involve a separate buyer.
Forbes had ranked Bartlett as the 221st-largest privately owned company in the nation with $2 billion in revenue in 2016. Savage, although it also is privately owned, was not ranked by Forbes as it has declined to provide the publication with its revenue totals, Hymas said.
The announcement said employees of both companies would continue to work at their current locations. Bartlett has about 200 employees in the Kansas City area.
Under the merger agreement, Savage's CEO Kirk Aubry will be CEO of Savage Enterprises. Bartlett CEO Bill Fellows will continue as president and CEO of Bartlett.
Fellows and Bartlett's chairman, James Hebenstreit, will join the board of Savage Enterprises.
This story was originally published May 15, 2018 at 5:09 PM with the headline "111-year Kansas City employer agrees to merge into Utah conglomerate in private deal."