Process and vibratory equipment sits at the heart of the industrial economy: feeding, conveying, heating, grinding, and screening the materials that move through every plant. Our Q3 2025 read on the market is that the sector is entering a growth phase, and the participants positioned as full-solution providers, not just commodity OEMs, are the ones capturing value as buyers consolidate the space.
Carleton McKenna & Co advises companies across material processing and handling equipment, engineered components, OEM and aftermarket products, hydraulics and pneumatics, design and engineering, and value-add distribution. Recent client work includes the Allor-Plesh and Action Vibratory transactions for the Webster Industries platform, alongside engagements for MPE Partners, NTS, PTR Group, Ohio Gratings, Precision Component Industries, and Eurofins.
How the market segments by function
Five product segments define the landscape, each with a distinct end-market mix and aftermarket profile.
Feeding equipment
Ensures precise material delivery. Product types include vibratory, screw, belt, apron, and pneumatic feeders. Applications span precise metering, heavy-duty material handling, and accurate weighing in food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agriculture, and mining. Aftermarket opportunity is moderate, driven by wear parts, calibration, and motor upkeep.
Conveying equipment
Moves materials within a production line. Vibratory, screw, bucket, chain, and pneumatic conveyors transport bulk materials at intermediate stages and lift them vertically. End markets include logistics, food and beverage, mining, chemicals, and recycling. Aftermarket revenue is high, with belts, motors, sensors, controls, and chain driving recurring sales.
Heating and cooling equipment
Regulates temperature during processing. Industrial ovens and furnaces, induction systems, heat exchangers, cooling towers, and chillers serve baking, roasting, drying, and heat treatment in food and beverage, automotive, plastics and rubber, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Aftermarket is high, with filters, burners, controls, and maintenance contracts.
Grinding equipment
Reduces material to particle size through mechanical force. Hammermills, shredders, and chippers handle initial size reduction, conversion to subproducts, and granulation. Plastics and rubber, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, recycling, and chemicals are the core end markets. Aftermarket is low to moderate, mostly blade and chamber wear.
Screening equipment
Separates material by size or shape. Vibratory, trommel, rotary, magnetic, and optical screens classify materials, grade them, and perform particle size analysis for mining, recycling, agriculture, food and beverage, and plastics and rubber. Aftermarket is moderate, primarily screen replacements and vibration components.
Where the growth is, and why
Forward CAGRs vary by segment, and the drivers behind them tell you where buyers will push hardest over the next several years.
Feeding: ~6% CAGR (industrial feeder market, $1.0B in 2024 to $1.4B by 2030)
Growth is driven by automation in food, pharma, and precision processing. Demand for accurate dosing and hygienic delivery supports platform-scale OEM demand.
Conveying: ~4% CAGR ($57.0B to $71.6B)
Steady growth tied to infrastructure, plant-level material flow, and e-commerce fulfillment investment. Material movement remains a critical component across all processing verticals.
Heating and cooling: ~5% CAGR (industrial dryers, $7.8B to $10.5B)
Expansion fueled by regulatory compliance, including food safety and pharma standards, and the push for energy efficiency in thermal processes. Higher-spec systems command pricing power.
Grinding: ~5% CAGR ($5.8B to $7.7B)
Demand supported by plastics recycling, chemical blending, and feedstock preparation in circular-economy use cases. Buyers remain interested in durable, low-maintenance platforms.
Screening: ~7% CAGR ($2.5B to $3.7B)
The fastest-growing segment, driven by sustainability-linked applications like recycling and waste sorting and precision requirements across food, agriculture, and specialty materials. A target-rich segment for innovation, aftermarket expansion, and add-on acquisitions.
Business value drivers and the positioning matrix
In our 2025 mid-year view, the sector is entering a growth phase, but not every participant is positioned to capitalize. Gainers act as full-solution providers, addressing customer pain points through end-to-end system design and execution. Strategic partnerships across adjacent OEM and distribution platforms continue to enhance near-term market share gains and longer-term value from reshoring.
Top-performing OEMs maintain cost discipline amid supply chain volatility, develop integrated systems aligned with customers' production flows, and use both organic innovation and M&A to expand capabilities. Participants have largely sustained pricing power even after commodity input costs normalized, and firms that retain price and deliver differentiation through performance, lead times, and support are outperforming the broader market.
The market positioning matrix sorts participants on breadth of offering and level of value-add. Four archetypes emerge, each with a characteristic valuation range.
Strategic Solution Providers, 9.0x to 12.0x+ EBITDA
High value-add and integrated breadth. Deep OEM and channel integration, value-add features that sustain margins, and a focus on automation, tailored systems, and aftermarket support. Premium valuations are driven by customer stickiness and revenue visibility.
Niche Innovators, 8.0x to 11.0x+
High value-add but narrow scope. Specialized, high-performance, or IP-intensive solutions, often tech-forward and smaller scale. Frequently strong in critical sectors such as pharma or defense, and buyers pay up for defensibility and bolt-on upside.
Full-Line Generalists, 6.0x to 8.0x
Broad product offerings without strong differentiation. Limited pricing power and vulnerability to commoditization cycles. They still offer tuck-in value, but valuations are tied to synergy potential and scale.
Commodity Product Vendors, 3.5x to 6.5x
Limited customization or integration, price-takers with little brand loyalty, and sensitivity to material price swings. Valuations are discounted unless a specific strategic angle exists.
The macro signal
Total capacity utilization is drifting down and sits roughly 2.2% below the long-run average, while real gross private domestic fixed investment in nonresidential equipment continues, with pockets of strength across industries. New orders for manufactured durable goods were relatively flat in 2024, and shipments fell in three of the last four months of the year. It is possible lead times are expanding due to lower capacity utilization despite growing demand. The steel market also saw delivery stabilization.
The Producer Price Index is stabilizing, and commodity prices, particularly hot- and cold-rolled steel, have moderated. Customers may begin pressuring OEMs to give back some recent price increases tied to cooling commodity input costs. Market winners will hold historical price increases through value-add product solutions, turnaround and delivery innovation, and customer support.
Recent M&A activity
Eleven transactions across the process and vibratory equipment landscape since June 2024 illustrate where buyers are concentrating capital.
Selected process equipment transactions
Serpentix (Westminster, CO), conveyor, automation, and fabrication systems for environmental, municipal, and industrial operations, acquired by Dry Fly Capital in July 2025.
TerraSource Global (Saint Louis, MO), material processing and handling equipment, acquired by ASTEC in July 2025 for $245M.
Metollform (Bretten, Germany), material processing and handling equipment and components, acquired in June 2025.
Kinder (Australia), conveyor components and process equipment for agriculture, food processing, ports, and power generation, acquired by Attalis Capital in May 2025.
McCloskey International (Didcot, U.K.), mobile crushing and screening equipment for mining, aggregates, and recycling, acquired by Aggregate Processing Inc. in December 2024.
Hebeler (Tonawanda, NY), industrial process equipment for chemical, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical markets, acquired by Carrier Process Equipment Group in November 2024.
Selected vibratory and adjacent transactions
TM Induction Heating (Netherlands), industrial heating equipment for metal assembly, acquired by Include Industries in October 2024.
Tecnopool (Italy), food treatment and processing equipment, acquired by Paragon Partners in October 2024.
BCA Automation & Robotics (Newburyport, MA), vibratory equipment for food and beverage, life sciences, and general industrial markets, acquired by Mpac in September 2024 for $17M.
T-TEK (Montgomery, AL), vibratory equipment for the packaging market, acquired by Duravant in August 2024.
Supreme Manufacturing (Stoneboro, PA), conveyors, hoppers, and feeders, acquired by LJ Electric in July 2024.
Allor / Plesh Industries (Brighton, MI), steel processing equipment and vibratory components, acquired by Webster Industries (an MPE Partners portfolio company) in June 2024. Carleton McKenna served as M&A advisor.
Three deal themes shaping process and vibratory M&A
Platform creation in fragmented equipment verticals
Buyers are taking advantage of the consolidation trend across highly fragmented verticals such as conveyors, screening, fluid control, and crushing, to build scale, expand margins, and unlock cross-selling. Objectives include establishing a scalable platform with shared infrastructure and customer relationships, realizing sourcing, SG&A, and facility synergies, and cross-selling components and systems to a larger base. May River Capital's formation of Industrial Flow Solutions, integrating multiple pump and fluid-handling assets, illustrates the playbook.
Aftermarket expansion for recurring revenue
Acquirers target businesses with strong service, parts, and consumable revenue, or invest to unlock latent aftermarket opportunity. The aim is recurring, high-margin revenue, extended lifetime value through rebuilds, service contracts, and OEM parts, and reduced cyclicality versus traditional capital-equipment budgets. SPX FLOW's 2023 acquisition of Philadelphia Mixing Solutions was driven in part by PMSI's strong aftermarket and field-service revenue tied to legacy installs in water and energy.
Vertical integration and end-market diversification
Acquirers expand up or down the value chain, or into adjacent verticals, to secure components, improve margins, and access new end markets. Objectives include securing supply of mission-critical or IP-sensitive parts, reducing reliance on external vendors, entering adjacent regulated or growing verticals, and offering more turnkey solutions. Kadant's 2021 acquisition of Balemaster moved it from pulp and paper into waste and recycling, bringing complementary equipment and customers under Kadant's engineering and sales infrastructure.
Thermal process equipment: a sector-within-a-sector
Thermal processing has emerged as a distinct deal theme inside the broader market, driven by custom engineering, fabrication, and integration capabilities.
Capability-driven consolidation in engineered thermal systems
Strategic buyers are acquiring thermal firms with custom engineering, fabrication, and system integration to build vertically integrated platforms. Adding experience in heat transfer, pressure vessels, and skid-mounted systems, capturing more value through in-house fabrication, and expanding into critical end markets like food, chemical, and energy are the typical objectives. Carrier Process Equipment Group's 2024 acquisition of Hebeler is a clear example.
Corporate divestitures unlocking thermal growth platforms
Diversified industrial operators divest thermal divisions to streamline portfolios, and buyers use the carve-outs as launchpads. nVent's 2024 divestiture of Thermal Management to Brookfield, including the Raychem and Tracer lines, created an energy-efficient infrastructure platform with strong aftermarket pull-through.
Service-driven M&A and lifecycle support
Acquirers are targeting companies with embedded field service and repair capabilities to extend customer lifetime value in complex, high-uptime environments. Cradle-to-grave support, stronger customer relationships through on-site presence, lower churn, and pull-through of consumables and parts are the objectives. Aalberts' 2024 acquisition of Paulo Products brought a nationwide heat-treatment network with strong technical service capabilities.
Buyers actively building platforms
A roster of strategic operators and financial sponsors is actively consolidating the vibratory and bulk material handling space.
Active platform builders and their selected add-ons
ASTEC with TerraSource Global (Q1 solution provider), add-ons include RexCon (2020), BMH Systems (2020), TerraSource Global (2025).
CW Industrial Partners with Innoveyance and Bryant Products (Q3 generalist), add-ons include Ohio Blow Pipe (2018) and SST Conveyor Components (2022).
May River Capital with Akona Process Solutions (Q1 solution provider), add-ons include Marion Process Solutions (2019), Kason (2019), Cablevey Conveyors (2021), Spiroflow (2022).
MFG with Mellott (Q2 niche innovator), add-ons include Norx and Southern Machinery (2023).
Milton Street Capital with ProVeyance Group (Q2 niche innovator), add-ons include Woodsage (2021) and Ashland Conveyor Products (2022).
MPE Partners with Webster Industries (Q1 solution provider), add-ons include Action Vibratory Equipment (2021), Allor-Plesh Manufacturing (2024), and the announced Renold transaction (2025). Carleton McKenna advised on Allor-Plesh and Action.
ONCAP with Kemac (Q3 generalist), add-ons include BACE (2021), PTR Baler & Compactor (2023), Maren Balers & Shredders (2023).
PPI with Continental Global Material Handling (Q3 generalist), add-ons include Van Gorp (2023), K&W Machine (2024), and Continental Global Material Handling (2024).
Warburg Pincus with Duravant (Q1 solution provider), add-ons include T-TEK (2024), POSS Design (2024), and Pattyn (2025).
The middle-market backdrop
In 1Q 2025, political and economic uncertainty weighed on middle-market activity. Completed transactions fell to 59, a decline of roughly 40% from the prior quarter, though dry powder and acquisition appetite remain at very high levels. Larger transactions continued to earn higher multiples: companies valued over $100M commanded 8.5x EBITDA for machinery manufacturing and 8.6x for the blended machinery sector. Despite Q1 softness, 2025 is primed for a volume rebound, driven by PE dry powder and increased seller readiness in aging ownership bases.
Across machinery manufacturing transactions tracked since 2003, EBITDA multiples scale clearly with size: 5.7x at $10M to $25M, 5.9x at $25M to $50M, 7.1x at $50M to $100M, and 8.5x at $100M to $500M, on roughly 21% EBITDA margins. The blended machinery sector follows a very similar curve. For owners of process and vibratory equipment companies, the message is consistent: scale, mix, and positioning in the matrix all matter, and they matter most at the moment of sale.
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