Costar Technologies to acquire Arecont Vision

LOS ANGELES—Arecont Vision, an IP camera and video solution provider which filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year, announced yesterday that an acquisition by Costar Technologies was approved by the bankruptcy court and is expected to close on July 13.

After the closing of the sale, upon emergence the assets formerly operated by Arecont Vision will begin operating as Arecont Vision Costar, LLC and be part of Costar, a U.S. corporation that designs, develops, manufactures, and distributes a full range of proven products for the video surveillance and machine vision markets.

“Arecont Vision is now strengthened significantly through our merger with Costar, and it will be to the advantage of our customers, partners, and our team as we introduce new offerings to the market,” Raul Calderon, president of Arecont Vision Costar LLC, told Security Systems News in an email interview. “Arecont Vision Costar will continuously evolve our roadmap and product strategy to retain our market leadership, while taking full advantage of our proven core engineering competencies, R&D, and industry partnerships."

“The acquisition of the assets of Arecont Vision expands Costar Technologies' video surveillance platform by strengthening our product line,” James Pritchett, Costar president and chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement. “It supports Costar's strategy to become a leader in the video surveillance industry, transitioning from a value-added OEM product company to a manufacturing based and design company. Along with our other recent acquisitions, the Arecont acquisition increases our manufacturing and design from approximately 50% to 75% of our revenue.”

Pritchet told SSN, “Priorities will include bringing the engineering teams from CohuHD Costar and Arecont Vision Costar together to make sure we are leveraging the strengths of both teams. We will start the process of a deep dive into processes so that we can install Costar's ERP system, NetSuite.”

Arecont Vision has been operating under normal business conditions throughout the bankruptcy process, did not experience any layoffs, and continued the introduction of its new Contera IP cameras, video management system, web services, and cloud-managed recorders, the company noted in its announcement. Under Costar's leadership, substantially all of Arecont's employees will be hired by Costar, customer programs and services will continue, and investments will be made into the development of new products, Arecont said.

UPDATED ON JULY 25