Larson Engineering recently announced the acquisition of Fagen Engineering the engineering arm of construction company Fagen, Inc., and attended last week’s National Ethanol Conference to introduce themselves to the industry.

Doug Edwards needed no introduction since he has been in the ethanol industry for a long time, having managed Fagan’s engineering office in Greenville, SC for the last 17 years. “There’s been a lot of smaller engineering firms that have sort of sprung up to try to support the industry with upgrades and modernizations but we, as Fagan Larson, want to step back in and try to reclaim a good bit of that business,” said Edwards.

Larson director of corporate business development Don Berg says like Fagan, Larson is a 100 percent employee-owned company and they are retaining all of Fagen Engineering’s employees. “I think it really does help us attract talent and retain talent and the teamwork that we’ve seen because of this, everyone really does care. The bottom line, because our employees are owners, we think that’s key to our continued growth.”

The acquisition stemmed from Larson’s more than 20-year working relationship with Fagen, as well as interest in the team’s specialized ethanol and biofuel plant and carbon capture expertise. “It fits into our strategic 10 year plan which is to grow revenues by 25% and we looked at how to do that. And one of the things that came up was acquiring someone and since we’ve worked over 20 years with Fagan, it just made sense,” said Berg.

“We were somewhat worried when we were looking to make a merger that we’re going to get consumed by one of these big 5000 man engineering firms and we were just going to disappear,” added Edwards. “Larson was just the right size. They are good people to work with.”

Larson Engineering - Don Berg and Doug Edwards (10:08)