DENVER – SLATE Partners (SLATE) announced today that its Principals advised Pioneer Sand Company, Inc., headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Pioneer Landscaping Materials, Inc., headquartered in Gilbert, Arizona, (collectively, Pioneer) on its sale to JLL Partners, a $1.5 billion New York-based private equity firm.
Established in 1968, Pioneer is the largest hardscape materials distributor in the Southwest region of the United States. Through 30 strategically located retail yards the Company offers do-it-yourself homeowners and professional landscapers a unique one-stop shopping solution for residential and commercial landscape renovation and maintenance products. These products include a wide variety of decorative stone, sand & gravel, flagstone, pavers, bricks, soil mixtures, mulches, and more. Pioneer sources its products from a variety of suppliers, including Company-owned rock quarries and sand pits.
“For over 45 years Pioneer has been the region’s dominant producer and distributor of landscape materials. There are very few people in the Colorado and Arizona markets who do not know the Pioneer brand, and it was a true honor for SLATE to be awarded the mandate to represent such a large and iconic company. It is truly a landmark transaction in the industry,” remarked Aaron Bachik, co-founder of SLATE.
“Given its size and reputation in the industry, we knew there were going to be hundreds of acquirers interested in Pioneer, including domestic and international strategics as well as private equity investors. However, we were hired specifically because of our knowledge in the building materials industry, which allowed us to narrow the process to only a handful of buyers we knew had a unique strategic interest in acquiring Pioneer. JLL Partners was working with the previous Executive Vice President of John Deere Landscapes, thus Pioneer represented a perfect fit for them,” added Jason Munoz, co-founder of SLATE.
Pioneer was supported in the transaction by its accounting firm, Henry & Horne, LLP, and received legal counsel from John C. Norling of Jennings, Strouss & Salmon, PLC.
