President
Joseph “Jay” P. Binkley, III
Mr. Binkley is the co-founder of Hermitage Equity Partners and has been in the private equity industry since 1996. Throughout his career in the industry, Mr. Binkley has worked for leading private equity firms, including TVV Capital, Onex Corp (through an operating role at portfolio company Sitel Corp), Charterhouse Group International in New York and GTCR in Chicago. Over the course of his career, Mr. Binkley has been on the boards of numerous companies in a variety of sectors, including industrials, food processing, business services and healthcare. Through his experience arranging deals and managing investments, Mr. Binkley has developed an extensive network of relationships with corporate executives, intermediaries and financing sources throughout the country. Prior to entering the private equity business, Mr. Binkley was an investment banker with Equitable Securities (now SunTrust Robinson Humphrey). Mr. Binkley has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and has achieved a Chartered Financial Analyst Designation.
Operating Partner, Food Processing
John M. Beasley
Mr. Beasley has been in the restaurant and food processing industries for over 35 years. Mr. Beasley is the former President and largest shareholder of Overton Distributors, an integrated produce distribution, value-added processing, repacking and trucking company that supplies all the produce needs for restaurant chains, including automated inventory tracking and traceability back to the grower. Mr. Beasley grew Overton to $65 Million in sales before selling the company to FreshPoint, the produce division of Sysco Corp. During his tenure as President of Overton, Mr. Beasley was also the Managing Director of the Produce Alliance, a group purchasing and marketing cooperative that supplied a combined $850 Million in annual volumes to independently owned produce distributors across the United States. Mr. Beasley is also the founder of PremaPak, an innovative produce processing company that was one of the original entities that formed Taylor Farms, a $1.2 Billion produce farming and processing company.
Operating Partner, Industrials
Richard “Dick” F. Brereton
Mr. Brereton has an extensive background in the industrials sector, including 25 years with Carrier Corporation, a division of United Technologies. During his tenure with Carrier, Dick worked his way through positions of increasing responsibility, including Engineering Manager, Plant Manager, Divisional Manager and eventually VP of Operations of the Commercial HVAC division, all before reaching 40 years of age. While Dick ran the Commercial HVAC Division, this business produced $8 Billion in sales across 10 manufacturing plants and generated record profitability. During his over 40 year career in manufacturing, Mr. Brereton has distinguished himself through hard work and a willingness to volunteer for difficult assignments, including numerous manufacturing optimization and operational turnaround projects. Mr. Brereton’s skills include a strong technical aptitude, demonstrated by several patents that he invented while at Carrier, coupled with outstanding leadership and interpersonal skills, demonstrated by his significant management responsibilities and numerous successful union negotiations. Mr. Brereton and Mr. Binkley have worked closely together on numerous acquisition evaluations and during Mr. Brereton’s successful tenure as President of Precision Boilers.
Operating Partner, Industrials
Harry “Bud” G. Hanna, Jr.
Mr. Hanna has 40 years of experience in the polymer and plastic injection molding industries, including significant experience with both Celanese and Leggett & Platt. Mr. Hanna began his career as a tooling engineer, responsible for designing and building all of the machine tool and die sets for a custom molding company. Mr. Hanna then moved to Celanese, where he was a material development engineer, working with customers to design and implement polymer-based product applications that did not traditionally employ plastic parts. Mr. Hanna then went into business for himself, eventually purchasing and running South Central Plastics, a custom plastic injection molding operation. At SCP, Mr. Hanna built his own tooling and manufactured proprietary plastic products for his customers. Being a fully integrated molding operation, Mr. Hanna became a single-source supplier for many of his accounts, eventually selling SCP to one of his large customers, Leggett & Platt. After the sale of SCP, Mr. Hanna remained as a general manager with L&P Plastics for five years before returning again to entrepreneurial endeavors.