The Extreme High Speed Experts

Meritec is the electronic connector and cable assembly division of parent company, Ohio Associated Enterprises, LLC (“Associated Enterprises”). Founded in 1967, The Company has firmly established itself in the global Electronic Interconnection Industry. The founder and owners actively participate in the day‐to‐day management of The Company and ensure that The Company adheres to its Mission Statement:

To create a Company with a reputation for superlative Customer satisfaction.
To create a Company that generates unique solutions to important problems.
To use our skills with metals, plastics, and product design to create these solutions, and to continuously upgrade these skills with education, innovation and tool enhancement.
To generate enough profit to ensure corporate longevity, and to significantly reward our people.
To have fun in the process.

Meritec can trace its 1967 beginning to a company called A P Products Incorporated founded by Meritec’s current Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, John T. “Jack” Venaleck. Like many entrepreneurs, Jack started the Company in his home when he realized he had a solution to a growing and significant problem in The Electronics’ Industry. Using his formal physics and engineering education, his inherent design skills, a drafting board, and a small milling machine he designed, Mr. Venaleck produced and sold the Company’s first products, a line of IC Test Clips. These were small, insert‐molded devices used by technicians for testing various size‐integrated circuits’ packages, that were then new to the burgeoning Electronics’ Industry. The IC Test Clip Line solved a significant problem, became immediately successful and is a standard in The Industry today. That first product was followed by a line of “solderless electronic breadboards” also used by technicians and engineers to prototype new circuits. It, too, became very successful, and numerous other product lines and thousands of part numbers followed. The Company’s internal ability to design, tool, build and sell products that solve significant problems for Customers quickly led to growth into electronic connectors and cable assemblies in the 1970s.

By 1977, The Company found itself selling and competing in several different markets. In order to focus efforts on the different needs of each market, it was decided to establish a “Parent Company” that is known today as Associated Enterprises, and to create the necessary divisions, subsidiaries and licensees. These manufacturing organizations, located in Ohio and California in The USA, Germany, England, France and Australia were created during the following eight years. In 1986, five (5) Divisions were sold to 3M. In 1989, The Parent Company established The Meritec Division located in Painesville, Ohio and consolidated its resources primarily to address solving significant problems Customers were/are experiencing in the high‐frequency high‐performance and tight contact pitch connector and cable assembly applications. Then, in 1999, The Parent Company acquired majority interest in Joy Signal Technology, LLC (joysignal.com) located in Chico, California. Joy, now a Meritec sister Company, is a leading supplier of interconnection products primarily sold to The Automated Test Equipment (ATE) Industry.

Meritec acquired Connectors Unlimited (CUI) and Xponet/Mold‐Tech mid‐2012. CUI is a custom interconnect solution provider with in‐house design services and The Company’s scope spans the design and manufacture of connectors, auxiliary hardware, and related components. CUI was honored by GE Healthcare with the “2012 Appreciation Award for Outstanding Performance and Dedication in the Area of Innovation”. CUI, led by Marty Ignasiak, continues to expand his firm’s product lines and utilize the vast resources at Meritec to provide innovative new interconnect related products and services toCustomers. Xponet/Mold‐Tech (MT) is a full service custom cable assembly business. The Company’s capabilities include the design and manufacture of custom over molds, over molded cable assemblies, and the application of “molded‐on” ribbon connectors to flat ribbon cable. Mold‐ Tech’s Division Head, Don Barber, continues to explore new possibilities previously unavailable prior to M&A, thereby increasingMT’s industry presence, and providing a larger product offering to current and future Customers. Joining forces sparked collaborative innovation to better serve the demands of evolving worldwide Electronics’ Industry.

Meritec, with divisions, has in excess of 200 patents and, over almost five decades, earned the reputation of a signal integrity leader and premier vertically integrated manufacturer of a wide variety of high quality, high‐performance electrical and electronic interconnect embedded systems, cables and connectors, focusing in the military, medical, datacom, and test and measurement marketplaces.