Wartsila Acquires Railko Marine Bearings

Wartsila Oy (Finland) announced it is acquiring the marine bearing division of Railko Ltd. (UK, itself a division of Tenmat Ltd., UK).

Railko's marine bearing division specializes in synthetic polymer stern tube bearings. Wartsila is the world's leading producer of stern tube seals and bearings; Railko's product lines broaden Wartsila's oil-lubricated lineup, and extend it to include water-lubricated bearings. Wartsila becomes the marine division's third owner in less than a year.

Railko had been a division of United Industries until June 2006, when Tenmat acquired Railko after United filed for receivership (in 2003, Tenmat had tried to buy Railko but United stymied the deal and Tenmat eventually gave up).

Railko, founded in 1957, pioneered the use of engineered plastics, particularly in bearing applications. In recent years, Railko specialized in plastic bearings for the automotive, rail, marine and industrial markets. In 2003, the company had employed 125 people, 95 at its manufacturing facility in Loudwater, a suburb of High Wycombe in the south of England near Heathrow Airport.

Tenmat engineers and manufactures specialized, high performance, non-metallic composite engineering materials and components. Key among the end products are a wide variety of composite bearings (under the Fiberglide and Feroform brands, for example), ceramics, fire protection and insulation materials. Tenmat supplies products to a broad cross section of automotive, aerospace, industrial and naval applications throughout the world. The company, for example, supplies shaft drive bearings to the United States, German, and British Navys.

When Tenmat acquired Railko, it closed Railko's plant, laid off the last 40 workers and moved the equipment to existing Tenmat facilities.

Tenmat did not give a reason why it is now divesting the marine bearing operations, although Railko and Wartsila have had a 30-year relationship in marine bearing materials and product engineering.

Wartsila recently announced another plant in Wuxi, China, to produce marine application seals and bearings.

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