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What started as a textile company’s flight department in 1950 has grown to provide civilian maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for Beechcraft, Challenger, Cessna, Embraer, Global Express, Gulfstream, Falcon, Learjet, Piaggio and Pilatus aircraft.
began as part of the flight depart- ment of JP Stevens, under the di- rection of the company’s chief pilot, Ralph Cuthbertson, back in the early 1950s. At the time, JP Stevens ran several Beechcraft aircraft and some of the family were pilots.
The buyout, for $1.2 billion, in- volved the rival, Georgia-based tex- tile producer West Point-Pepperell, the Bibb Company, owned by Foley, and Odyssey Partners, a Wall Street investment firm.
Foley’s involvement came out of his background in private equity. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and had a stint with the consultancy firm McKinsey & Com-
New York City, with administrative offices in Greenville, SC. The textile plants produced cotton, wool and synthetic yarns and fabrics and prod- ucts such as towels, carpets, hosiery, glass fabrics and sheets. In 1989, the company was acquired and split into multiple companies. Stevens Aviation continued as a separate entity.
The Stevens Aerospace & Defense website describes its history in this way: Stevens Aerospace sets the stan- dard for excellence in aircraft sales, service and management. Its rich his- tory began in Greenville, SC, when Robert T. Stevens, then president of The J.P. Stevens Company, decided to start his own flight department. By the mid-1950s, Stevens Aerospace expanded its capabilities by pumping fuel and doing repairs on transient aircraft. The flight department quickly outgrew its hangar at the Greenville Downtown Airport, and in 1962, Stevens became the only FBO at the newly constructed Greenville-Spartanburg Airport.
The 1960s were a time of great growth for Stevens, especially once it became a Beechcraft distributor and authorized service center. By the end of the decade, they had over 100 employees and more than two dozen aircraft in their f leet. They became known as the place to have your King Air serviced.
Its services and geography con- tinued to expand in the 1980s as it became a full-service facility offering
Stevens is also a prime service provider of depot maintenance, refurbishment and modifications for military versions of general aviation airframes.
maintenance, avionics, completions, sales and FBO services, with two ad- ditional locations added in Nashville, TN, and Dayton, OH. The company’s current ownership by Tom Foley started in 1989.
According to Bizav Media, Foley has headed up Stevens Aviation since he acquired it in 1989 as part of his share of a three-way buyout of the North Carolina textile manufacturer JP Stevens. Today’s MRO operation
pany before joining Citicorp Venture Capital. He left CVC to set up his own private equity firm, NTC Group, in 1986. Shortly after he launched NTC, Foley bought a textile firm, the Bibb Manufacturing Company, in Georgia. Initially, therefore, the buyout looked like simply a consolidation move in the textile business, with two textile compa- nies acquiring a third, but when it came to deciding who got what with
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