DenMat buys Bay Area firm
In its second acquisition this year, Lompoc-based DenMat has bought G.Hartzell & Son, a dental instruments company in the Bay Area.
DenMat was founded in the 1970s and pioneered the idea of premium toothpaste with the Rembrandt brand. A new group of private equity owners took the company over in 2011 and moved the headquarters from Santa Maria to a 100,000-square-foot facility in Lompoc.
Since then, the company has been on a buying and hiring spree to complement its current best-known product, the Lumineers brand of dental veneer. Earlier this year it purchased Zila, a Colorado-based company with a line of oral hygiene products. In the the past two years, DenMat acquired several dental product lines from Royal Philips Electronics and bought PeriOptix, a California firm that makes magnification and illumination technologies for doctors and dentists.
Hartzell’s products are mostly made in the East Bay city of Concord, with a few products coming from Germany. DenMat said that most of Hartzell’s operations are expected to remain in Concord, with “only select functions transferring” to Lompoc.
“Hartzell instruments are the world’s gold standard for dental and surgical instruments because of their extraordinary quality, consistency and craftsmanship,” DenMat CEO Steve Semmelmayer said in a news release. “DenMat now has broadened its range of superior products for hygiene, as well as instrumentation for restorative, periodontal, endodontic and surgical procedures.”
