A Path Worn by Hard Work, Family Values, and Determination.
Discipline and resilience from decades of experience
Aligning Your Life’s Work with Forge52’s Support & Expertise
Forge 52 is a private equity firm dedicated to generating value for founders and family owners of manufacturing companies. With a foundation of deep cultural values, hard work, and operational discipline gained from generations of manufacturing expertise, we partner with business owners seeking to protect and build on their life’s work.
We support our partner companies with our deep manufacturing expertise and operational know-how. Our value creation plan prioritizes simplicity, minimizing risk, and disciplined investment in corporate infrastructure to help business owners achieve their true vision of success and legacy for their companies.
We do not rely on financial engineering to generate investment returns. We use limited debt to close transactions, keeping risk low and ensuring financial flexibility to invest in the business.
Forge52:
Principles in Action
We believe choosing the right partnership is vital, as we recognize that a good partner will help us navigate challenges and work constructively toward our mutual success.
We believe in investing in partner companies early in our investment period, making decisive choices to create long-term success for all stakeholders.
We believe in empowering our management teams, leveraging their expertise and experience to make informed decisions and drive the company forward while backed by our support and advice.
We believe in preserving the core strengths that made a business successful, ensuring that we maintain the company’s culture and preserve existing values while fostering continued growth and resilience.
We believe in the power of simplicity, focusing on a few key indicators to measure and track progress effectively, ensuring a business stays the course.
Partnerships Forged on Clear Differentiators
Industry Focus
Deep focus in manufacturing, unlocking operational value
Partner Interaction
Collaborative, relationship-centered partnerships
Investment Strategy
Focus on simplicity, invest in the business early in the hold period
Decision-Making
Management-led, leveraging your team’s expertise with our team’s support and advice
Approach to Growth
Disciplined, pragmatic growth with a focus on stability; don’t change what makes the company successful
Risk Management
Returns driven by investment in business capabilities, not financial engineering; minimize risk with limited debt and carefully managed evolutionary change in how the company does business
Cultural Fit
Values-driven, respectful of your unique company culture
Long-Term Vision
Committed to long-term success and sustained growth
“A vision is only a story. The most important part is actually making a vision come true."
– Mauricio Guiterrez
From 1952 to Today
A small workshop, founded in 1952, was started with just twelve workers in the heart of Monterrey, Mexico. 72 years later, Deacero, a global name in steel manufacturing, continues as a North American leader with over 10,000 employees and 7,500 distributors across the Americas.
The Gutierrez family continues to own and run all Deacero operations, including three steel mills, 19 plants, 20+ recycling centers, and 30+ distribution centers across 20+ countries. What began as a small, family-led operation continues this same way decades later, with the Gutierrez family still at the helm.
Mauricio, his father, Sergio, and brothers, Sergio, Gabriel, and Eugenio, are proud to bring the same values and work ethic to Forge52—values they learned from their family and decades of teamwork building Deacero. Over time, as the Gutierrez family continued their work with steel manufacturing, they successfully partnered on investments in tech, real estate, hospitality, and the food and beverage industries, expanding their operational reach across diverse sectors and continuing to build a legacy of hard work and growth.
The Forge52 team is honored to apply its generations of manufacturing and operations experience to family and founder-owned manufacturing companies across North America, helping businesses continue to build legacies as their family has done for three generations.