Connect with us

Technology

Cellwatch Parent, NDSL, Merges with RLE Technologies; Forms New Platform, Parameter, Strengthening Solutions for Data Centers and Critical Infrastructure Amid Surging AI Power Needs

Published

on

CHICAGO, Dec. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — May River Capital, a Chicago-based lower middle-market private equity firm, and its portfolio company, RLE Technologies, today announced the acquisition of NDSL Group Ltd., manufacturer of Cellwatch and leading battery monitoring and management solutions for data centers, utilities, and telecom markets. The two companies will merge as a new platform company, Parameter.

Parameter represents the combined strengths of RLE Technologies and NDSL, with more than 70 years of collective experience providing process industry and facilities management professionals with real-time insights into mission critical operations. Parameter’s advanced solutions sense, detect, monitor, analyze, and predict the quality, condition, and volume of liquids, gases, energy, and materials in their environments. Parameter serves end markets including data centers, utilities, critical infrastructure, and more.

Based in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, NDSL brings a 30-year history as a trusted supplier of the industry-leading Cellwatch line of products and services. NDSL’s comprehensive monitoring solutions enable customers to most effectively manage their critical battery investments. Cellwatch products prevent outages, reduce costs, meet regulatory requirements, and offer the strongest durability and reliability in the industry.

Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, RLE Technologies brings a 40-year history as provider of facility environment monitoring, fluid leak detection, and airflow management products, helping facility operations professionals protect against failures that could lead to disruptions in mission critical environments.

Through a holistic approach to monitoring and management, Parameter’s comprehensive portfolio of products protects the world’s most valuable assets and makes the future of vital operations more predictable and manageable.

Dan Barlow, May River Capital Partner, noted: “We are excited to unite the deep teams and resources of NDSL and RLE under the Parameter banner. This merger strengthens our ability to best serve the critical infrastructure monitoring and detection needs of our customers.”

“We are thrilled to be joining with RLE Technologies and rebranding as Parameter,” said Earl Philmon, CEO of NDSL. “NDSL has been a trailblazer in battery asset management and monitoring, helping to prevent unplanned outages with innovative solutions. Our Cellwatch line complements RLE’s products. The benefits of this union are significant, and I look forward to the growth opportunities ahead,” Philmon added.

“With the support of May River, the strongest teams and the global leading technology companies in system monitoring for essential industries are brought together in Parameter. I am excited to partner with Earl and our team of experienced professionals to launch Parameter and to accelerate the advancement of future technologies and capabilities,” said Mike Blazes, CEO of RLE Technologies and Parameter.

Mesirow Financial and Laytons LLP served as financial advisor and legal counsel to NDSL, respectively. Livingstone Partners LLC and Paul Hastings LLP served as financial advisor and legal counsel to May River Capital, respectively. Tree Line Capital Partners provided debt financing in support of the acquisition.

About May River Capital

May River Capital is a Chicago-based private equity firm focused on investing in lower middle-market, industrial growth companies. May River Capital invests in high-quality industrial growth businesses, including precision manufacturing, engineered products and instrumentation, specialized industrial services, and value-added industrial distribution services. For more information, please visit www.mayrivercapital.com.

About Parameter

Parameter is a new May River Capital platform company formed by the merger of RLE Technologies and NDSL. Parameter empowers process and facility management industries with real-time insights into mission critical operations. Parameter’s advanced solutions sense, detect, monitor, analyze, and predict the quality, condition, and volume of liquids, gases, energy, and materials in their environments. By transforming complex data inputs into actionable intelligence, Parameter makes the future of vital operations more predictable and manageable. Parameter has operations in Fort Collins, Colorado; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Milton Keynes, United Kingdom; and Shanghai, China. To learn more, please visit www.parameter-tech.com.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cellwatch-parent-ndsl-merges-with-rle-technologies-forms-new-platform-parameter-strengthening-solutions-for-data-centers-and-critical-infrastructure-amid-surging-ai-power-needs-302328208.html

SOURCE May River Capital, LLC

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

Published

on

By

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

Continue Reading

Technology

Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

Published

on

By

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

Continue Reading

Technology

Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

Published

on

By

New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

Continue Reading

Trending