Pennwalt Corp. reached an agreement in principle yesterday for sale of its Stokes division to Alcatel Vacuum Products Inc. of Higham, Mass., for an undisclosed price.
Stokes makes industrial-vacuum equipment at a plant on Tabor Road in Northeast Philadelphia, which employs 346 people. The buyer is a subsidiary of a French firm, Alcatel CIT.
Pennwalt declined to disclose annual sales of the Stokes unit or to estimate the effect of the transaction on its first-quarter earnings.
Richard H. Drake, president and chief executive officer of Alcatel Vacuum Products, said that the deal would result in an overall increase in jobs and activity at the Philadelphia plant, though an undetermined number of redundant jobs might be eliminated. His company plans to consolidate its manufacturing and administrative headquarters here.
Alcatel Vacuum Products employs 60 people in the Boston area, but the company does not operate a manufacturing plant in the United States. "That's why the deal is so attractive to us," Drake said.
Drake also predicted a significant increase in sales for Stokes when it becomes part of Alcatel. Stokes now sells 97 percent of what it produces in the United States. Alcatel intends to distribute its products internationally, he said.
The sale of the Stokes unit does not affect Pennwalt's similarly named Sharpless-Stokes division, a maker of centrifuges and pharmaceutical tableting equipment. Sharpless-Stokes operates a plant in Warminster and will continue as part of Pennwalt.
Pennwalt acquired the Stokes vacuum-products unit in 1963 when it bought the Stokes Corp. and Stokes' plant in the Northeast.
Alcatel CIT is a subsidiary of Alcatel N.V., a $15 billion conglomerate based in Brussels, Belgium.
