Centuri Holdings has acquired Philadelphia-based J.J. White and will fold the business into its Riggs Distler unit, giving the utility and energy infrastructure contractor a larger union electrical and mechanical workforce across the Northeast and Midwest. Terms were not disclosed.
J.J. White brings nearly 1,000 employees, including more than 950 union field workers, plus a book of industrial maintenance, outage, turnaround, HVAC, and electrical construction work tied to power generation, industrial plants, and data centers. Centuri said the target has $315 million of contracted backlog and more than $2.8 billion of identified pipeline opportunities. The buyer expects the acquisition to contribute more than $20 million in annual gross profit, while maintaining margins in line with its existing business.
This is less about geographic expansion than labor control and end-market mix. Centuri has long been tied to regulated utility spending, a business that offers durability but limited upside when capital programs flatten or face permitting delays. J.J. White gives it denser exposure to industrial capital projects and the data center buildout, where customers increasingly want contractors that can handle electrical, mechanical, and maintenance scopes under one roof. In a market constrained by skilled labor, buying a union workforce can be faster and more reliable than building one organically.
The Riggs Distler fit is also telling. Centuri is not buying a standalone platform to reinvent its portfolio. It is strengthening an existing operation that already serves heavy industrial and power customers, suggesting a bolt-on strategy aimed at cross-selling and tighter execution rather than headline scale.
That approach lands in an M&A market where buyers are showing renewed appetite for construction assets with specialized capabilities. Acquire.fyi data shows construction deal volume is up 92.3% year to date, even as broader M&A volume is roughly flat. The scramble is not for generic contractors. It is for labor pools, regional density, and technical scopes linked to electrification and digital infrastructure.
Centuri also reiterated its roughly 2x leverage target for year-end 2026, a signal that balance-sheet discipline still matters in a rate-sensitive market. If integration holds, the acquisition should improve Centuri’s pricing power in union electrical work. Competitors serving utilities and industrial owners may now face a harder question. Build the workforce, or buy it.
Source: Company press release and Acquire.fyi's proprietary data
