Neptune Benson

In 1956, Junius and Raymond Gertz founded Neptune Benson, starting as a small residential and commercial pool company. Their initial focus was straightforward: serve local pool owners. The company soon identified a more significant opportunity and pivoted its strategy to manufacture filtration systems for large institutional pools over 250,000 gallons. This shift set the stage for decades of steady growth. The company became a quiet leader in water filtration and disinfection, not just for recreational facilities like water parks and aquariums, but also for industrial and municipal water markets. A key part of its playbook was strategic acquisitions, folding companies like Lawson Aquatics and ETS-UV into its operations to expand its product lines into components and ultraviolet disinfection systems. In 2011, a partnership with private equity firm Audax Group accelerated this strategy, leading to five acquisitions that pushed the company into new markets. The culmination of this journey arrived in 2016, when Evoqua Water Technologies, a global leader in water treatment, acquired Neptune Benson. The acquisition was a natural fit, merging Neptune Benson's specialized expertise into Evoqua's larger portfolio and marking a significant exit for a company that began with local swimming pools.