CELEBRATING MEMBER
AMWINS
The insurance market for gases and welding supply distributors has had some ups and downs in the 25 years through which AmWINS traces its roots. Nevertheless, the program underwriter has been a constant, says Managing Director Bill McCloy. “People jump in and out the marketplace. We’ve never done that. We’ve always been there.” The company’s structure has changed across the quarter century, though. Until
25
2003, the business worked for an international insurance carrier. When that carrier abandoned the U.S. market in 2003, AmWINS changed its business plan and became an independent wholesaler representing a carrier, rather than working for the carrier. “We solved that crisis,” McCloy says. “Most of our clients came with us.”
Today, AmWINS is the largest insurance wholesale distributor in the United States, he says. The challenge for the program underwriter is the one that so many in GAWDA recognize: consolidation. With clients from the largest regional distributors to momand-pop operations with two trucks, McCloy says that some accounts disappear when the distributor is purchased by a larger company. Despite that, he says, “we’ve been able to sustain a viable program.”
CATALINA CYLINDERS
For Catalina Cylinders, in Garden Grove, Calif., 2017 marks the 25th anniversary of the purchasing of the company by Philip S. Keeler and his company, Aluminum Precision Products. In 2009, Catalina adopted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), and the company ownership has been gradually transitioning from the Keeler family to Catalina’s employees. David Silva, Catalina’s vice president of sales and marketing, says a cor-
Catalina Cylinders marks its 25th anniversary this year. The company recently built a 107,000 square-foot facility for composite-wrapped cylinders.
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