July 29, 2008

German Firm to Acquire Cherry Corp.

Small Business Times

Cherry Corp., which operates its global and North American headquarters in Pleasant Prairie, will be acquired by ZF Friedrichshafen AG of Germany.

The German firm is expanding its worldwide automotive supplier position for driveline and chassis technology.
Cherry's corporate headquarters has seven employees, and its nearby North American headquarters has about 140 employees working in sales, administration and design, according to Dan King, the company's vice president of finance and administration.

Most of Cherry's manufacturing is in Germany, where it employs half of its 3,100 employees. Its North American manufacturing is based in Mexico, where it employs about 650 workers, King said.

Cherry will operate as an independent business unit of ZF, and no jobs will be lost in Pleasant Prairie, said Frank Buschemi, a spokesman with ZF. The company's name will change to ZF Electronics GMBH, but the Cherry brand name will remain for non-automotive parts.

In 2007, Cherry had sales of approximately $ 400 million with 3,100 employees worldwide.

Cherry was founded in 1953 and develops as well as produces switches, sensors, control units, and electronics modules for the automotive industry, components for industrial and household applications, and computer input devices.

Peter Cherry, chairman and president of Cherry said, "This transaction has great strategic value; as it will allow Cherry to expand its current customer base and ZF will bring substantial additional resources for future growth in all of Cherry's product segments. There are many opportunities for incorporating Cherry's technologies into the broad range of ZF applications."

"With ZF Electronics, we are reinforcing our competence profile in the fields of mechatronics and electronics" said Hans-Georg Harter, ZF's chief executive officer and president. "In particular for our future tasks in driveline and chassis technology, we can swiftly apply Cherry's know-how."

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.