Littelfuse acquires Carling Technologies, Maretron included: Business as usual?

Littlelfuse — a large Chicago-based manufacturer of industrial technology — is acquiring Carling Technologies, and that makes me a bit nervous about the future of Carling’s marine brands. Will Octoplex, MPower, and especially all the (great) Maretron electronics on my boat continue to be developed and supported even though Littelfuse currently has only a minor marine market presence?

Well, Carling CEO Rick (Richard) Sorenson sounded quite confident about how well Littelfuse will manage the 101-year-old family business during a call yesterday. While he and his children will move on, otherwise he expects the near term to be “business as usual” and added that a Littelfuse executive became quite enthused with the goings-on at Carling’s Fort Lauderdale Boat Show booth.

However, it’s hard to imagine any multi-market industrial exec as enthusiastic about the wee world of marine electronics as Rick himself; see my 2008 profile of his record size NMEA 2000 network and/or this more recent MEJ interview. Plus, when I listened to Littelfuse’s Oct. 27 Q2 earnings presentation, the marine aspect of the Carling acquisition wasn’t even mentioned while the synergies of Carling’s main product lines with several of Littelfuse’s main markets are clear.



Then again, I may be overly paranoid about what can happen to a marine electronics division when the mother corporation grows substantially in size and customer bases. For instance, Raymarine seems to be in “full speed ahead” development mode despite the fact that biggish FLIR unsuccessfully put them up for sale in early 2020 and then both were swallowed by huge Teledyne in May.

Moreover, Rick told me that there are several new marine products soon to be announced, first a new and improved Maretron ultrasonic wind and weather station that I look forward to learning more about. And what if Littelfuse decides that Carling’s marine group is too far beyond its core markets? Given Brunswick’s acquisition of Navico and the similar capabilities of Carling/Maretron products to those of new Navico siblings like CZone, might a major marine player like Garmin, or even Teledyne/Raymarine, make the acquisition so that they too can offer deeper boat system integration?

Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison

Panbo editor, publisher & chief bottlewasher from 4/2005 until 8/2018, and now pleased to have Ben Stein as a very able publisher, webmaster, and editing colleague. Please don't regard him as an "expert"; he's getting quite old and thinks that "fadiddling fumble-putz" is a more accurate description.

3 Responses

  1. Grant Jenkins says:

    Interesting, Ben, I too would be concerned about Maretron’s future – and why they wouldn’t even be mentioned in the announcement doesn’t look good – although that may have just been a PR fail. A WSO100 replacement would be nice to see – but not if it’s going to ultimately be orphaned by the parent! I guess time will tell…

    • Good day Grant, as the Marine Technology Group is a small portion of Carling Technologies family we are still inclusive but unfortunately not the biggest spotlight. Littelfuse has had a passion to enter into the Marine business for many years and now with the Marine Group (Maretron, OctoPlex and MPower) they now have the power to do so.

      As for an update in regards to the successor to the WSO100, the WSO200, is in the final stages of testing and certifications. We will be able to announce more accurately by the end of this year and will update the product page when this becomes available.
      https://www.maretron.com/products/wso200.php
      We do anticipate the WSO200 to be available between end of 1st quarter to beginning 2nd quarter of 2022!

      • Grant Jenkins says:

        OK, thank you Ron, great to hear from someone in the know! And thanks for the update on the WSO200, I’m looking forward to its release. Cheers,

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