A Maine-based microwave antenna manufacturer has acquired two additional product lines, including one that originally was produced in the state until it was sold to a division of General Dynamics more than a decade ago.

The manufacturer, Mwave Industries LLC, said it has purchased the assets and intellectual property of two antenna brands previously owned by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies and is tooling up to produce those products at its Windham facility. One of them is a line of microwave antennas created by Gabriel Electronics, which once employed more than 100 workers in Scarborough.

It will be something of a product homecoming for Mwave founders Peter Farnum, Christopher Mosher and Michael Cahill, all of whom worked for Gabriel before General Dynamics purchased the company in 2003 and moved its manufacturing operation to North Carolina.

Farnum, Mosher and Cahill left Gabriel and started their own company in order to stay in Maine. Now, they are hoping to bring some of those lost jobs back, along with a big boost in revenue.

“All of the legacy Gabriel products that left Maine are coming back,” Mwave spokesman Peter Anania Jr. said.

Mwave is owned by Anania & Associates Investment Company LLC, a Maine-based private equity firm with a portfolio of eight Maine manufacturing companies representing more than 450 employees and $75 million in annual revenue. Along with the Gabriel line, Mwave also acquired the Mark Grid Antenna product line, which General Dynamics had purchased from its previous owner in Illinois.

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Mwave, which employs about a dozen workers, said it expects to begin shipments of the new antenna products to customers in the fourth quarter. Anania said Mwave already has hired two additional staff members as a result of the acquisitions and hopes to expand its workforce to at least 20 in the near future.

“We hope in the next year it will double the business,” he said.

Anania said the company is working to position itself as a major player in the microwave antenna market, which he said generates sales of about $200 million a year. He would not disclose Mwave’s annual revenue nor the purchase price for the Gabriel and Mark antenna brands.

Terrestrial microwave antennas such as those produced by Mwave are widely used for point-to-point telecommunications but have other uses, including broadcasting, mobile phones, radar and navigation.

Maine is home to other antenna manufacturers, including Micronetixx Technologies in Lewiston and Dielectric in Raymond.

 


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