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Victrex acquires polymer-gear manufacturer Kleiss Gears

| By Mary Bailey

Victrex plc (Thornton Cleveleys, U.K.; www.victrex.com) has announced the acquisition of U.S.-based polymer-gears specialist Kleiss Gears Inc. (www.kleissgears.com). Kleiss Gears has a proven track record stretching over 20 years of replacing and complementing metal gear systems with high-performance engineering polymer gears.

The pairing of Kleiss Gears’ high-precision gear design, testing and manufacturing capability with Victrex’s materials technology, innovation focus, technical excellence, and global commercial scale, provides a new integrated option for customers. Victrex is now able to better support the development of high-performance polymer gears for demanding applications in automotive, energy and other industries. Kleiss Gears has been at the forefront of gear and tool design, validation testing, and manufacture of precision-engineered polymer gears since 1995.

David Hummel, chief executive of Victrex, said, “The acquisition of Kleiss Gears is in line with our strategy of creating value through high performance polymer solutions and demonstrates how we are moving further downstream to support our customers and our markets. Kleiss Gears offers Victrex the opportunity to accelerate adoption of our Victrex PEEK gear proposition to meet the needs of the automotive industry and is in line with our aim to double the amount of PEEK volume in cars over the medium term. We are delighted to be able to build on the existing expertise of Kleiss and further develop tailor-made solutions for our customers.”

“We have been partnering with Victrex for many years and are convinced that our customers and end-users will benefit from a more integrated approach, enabling them to develop and launch gears that solve their key challenges with greatly reduced development cycles,” commented Rod Kleiss, President of Kleiss Gears.