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Selling a water treatment company?
A permanent home for your commercial water treatment business
Cooling towers, boilers, and building water systems need steady attention to run efficiently and safely. If your specialists keep them running for hospitals, schools, plants, and office buildings, we'd like to talk.
Why we like it
Why we buy water treatment businesses
We get it: when you do the job right, nobody notices. The tower runs, the equipment lasts, and the Legionella results come back clean.
We buy essential service businesses across the Southeast and keep them. Commercial water treatment (cooling towers) is our kind of work: your customers need it on a schedule, and they can't skip it.
Systems that never stop
Cooling towers and boilers need ongoing chemical treatment to control scale, corrosion, and microbiological growth. Skipping it costs owners energy, equipment life, and downtime.
Legionella has raised the stakes
Cooling towers have been linked to Legionnaires' disease outbreaks. ASHRAE Standard 188 and CDC guidance call for water management programs, and CMS expects healthcare facilities to have them.
Recurring service and supply
Treatment programs usually combine regular service visits, testing, and chemical supply, so the same customers need you all year.
Expertise customers rely on
Facility managers lean on experienced water treatment specialists. Those relationships, and the know-how behind them, tend to last for years.
What we look for
What stands out to us
No business checks every box. These are the strengths we get excited about.
- Recurring service accounts for cooling towers, boilers, and closed-loop systems
- Experienced water treatment specialists with deep customer relationships
- Testing capabilities and support for Legionella water management plans
- Healthcare, education, industrial, and commercial real estate customers
- Solid chemical supply relationships and good service records
Our criteria
- Geography
- Across the Southeast, with deeper interest in Atlanta and Georgia. We love investing in our community.
- Revenue
- $2.5 – $50 million. Typically recurring or reoccurring
- Cash flow
- $0.5 – $5 million
- Ownership
- Founder owned or long-time owner
- Structure
- Majority to full buyout, including partnerships with management
For owners
What happens after you sell
We buy with our own money and we keep what we buy. No fund clock, and no plan to flip it in a few years.
Your customers and your team come first. We invest in people, equipment, and technology and build on what you started. Deals range from majority to full buyouts, including partnerships with management.
Confidential from the first conversation. We know how sensitive a possible sale is for your team and your customers. What you tell us stays between us.
Know a water treatment business owner?
Introduce us. If we buy the company, you get $10,000 in cash at close. (Not available to brokers, investment bankers, or other financial intermediaries.)
Contact
Not ready to sell? Let's talk anyway.
Most conversations start years early. Whether you're ready now or just starting to think about the future of your water treatment business, it costs nothing and stays between us.
Questions owners ask
Is Howler Mountain a private equity firm?
No. We're a family-owned company based in Atlanta. We buy with our own money and keep what we buy. We don't buy businesses to flip them.
Will our conversations stay confidential?
Yes. We know how sensitive a possible sale is for your team and your customers. What you tell us stays between us.
My business is smaller than your criteria. Should I still reach out?
Yes. A smaller company can be a great add-on to one we already own, so it's worth a conversation.
Other industries we buy