SALISBURY — Kaman Distribution Group has acquired Salisbury-based Integro Technologies.

Integro Technologies was founded in Tom Campion’s home in Pennsylvania in 2001 and moved its headquarters to Salisbury in 2005. In its 20-year history, Integro has evolved into an award-winning international business anchored at 301 S. Main St.

Integro is an industrial automation company that specializes in machine vision inspection. The company’s tech can be found at the Rowan County Courthouse, where thousands of visitors have walked through a temperature scanning tunnel as part of the court’s COVID-19 safety protocols.

Based in Connecticut, Kaman Distribution Group is a $1.2 billion national distributor of highly engineered products and services with over 220 locations in the U.S.

“We are very excited to have Integro join KDG,” Ben Mondics, president and CEO of Kaman Distribution Group, said in a news release. “Integro is a leading player in machine vision inspection and we look forward to pairing their capabilities with our national scale to bring significant value to our respective customers and suppliers. The founders of Integro have built a great organization with a talented and dedicated group of associates and we look forward to their continued contribution and success as part of KDG.”

Integro will be a part of Kaman’s automation business unit, but will support the entire platform across a number of industries including pharmaceutical, medical, automotive, aerospace, consumer products, packaging and logistics.

“We are very excited to partner with KDG and leverage their national footprint and value-added capabilities,” Tom said in a news release. “Working as a team, we have always improved and evolved to accomplish far more than we could ever achieve individually. Joining forces with KDG represents an important milestone in our journey to help accelerate our growth.”

Tom’s brother and current Integro president Shawn Campion said the company has been approached by close to 30 companies with acquisition proposals since 2013. Kaman Distribution Group, he said, stood out from the pack.

“Kaman Distribution Group reached out, along with a number of other companies, and we felt like they were a good fit,” Shawn said. “They have a new strong management team and they have ambitious goals which will align with our ambitions also. It felt like a great fit and the right timing.”

The acquisition, Shawn said, won’t change much in Integro’s day-to-day operations.

“We’re maintaining the same healthcare, same 401K, same vision and insurance, same bonus structures, same commission, same everything across the board,” Shawn said. “It’s not disruptive or going to be a painful event in their lives. We want a very smooth transition and to keep people focused on what we do best and that’s to develop solutions for engineering customers and that’s what we’re doing.”

The deal also doesn’t mean Integro has plans to leave Salisbury anytime soon.

“It’s not purchase us and move us,” Shawn said. “It’s purchase us and grow us.” 

Shawn said there could be plans down the road for Integro to become a technology center for the southeast, but there are still many details to work through.

Integro announced a $2.67 million expansion of its Rowan County facility in late 2020 that would add 30 workers to its ranks, bringing its total number of employees to over 70. 

While the physical expansion to add 2,500 feet onto the current facility hasn’t materialized, Shawn said the company has already started working toward its goal of hiring 30 employees.

“We began hiring almost immediately,” Shawn said. “We’ve been hiring steadily for a variety of positions. A lot of them are high travel positions, working in Amazon and Walmart logistics centers and other distribution centers across the country. We continue to seek talent with work ethic and drive to take on new technologies and apply them in the industry.”

The expansion was incentivized by level one economic development investment grants from both the Salisbury City Council and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. Those grants will have the county return 75% of the company’s paid taxes for a five-year period, contingent on Integro meeting certain employment requirements.