Another change in ownership of a nearly 100-year-old manufacturer has the company again thinking it can further its global position with the help of a small Genesee County town.

Management of Lapp Insulators, which employs about 130 people in Le Roy and is the third-largest supplier of high-voltage insulators in the world, said the company will become stronger with its recent acquisition by Pfisterer, a Germany-based firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We like that the additional products that they bring to us help complement our strong market presence in the U.S., and as a result, can mean very positive things for our employees here in New York,” said Rob Johnson, managing director and chief operating officer of Lapp.

Pfisterer officials do not expect big changes in Le Roy as a result of the acquisition, which was announced earlier this month.

“With specific regard to Le Roy, no major changes are planned in the foreseeable future,” said Andreas Martin, a spokesman for the company.

Pfisterer said purchasing Lapp and its Genesee County manufacturing site will allow the company to jump into the growing American electrical utility business with a complete supply of products for the overhead power line market and other related areas.

Currently, Lapp makes high-voltage electric insulators used in transmission lines, power plants and power substations.

“Investment in the U.S. power grid has been growing over the past years, and our product set serves that core market,” said Johnson.

“Our grid has been equated to the grid of a third-world country, with the number of power outages we have had as compared to other developed countries like in Europe,” Johnson said.

John S. Lapp founded the company in 1916 after partnering with Fred Locke on what is known as Victor Insulators, an Ontario County firm specializing in porcelain insulators. It was Locke who invented porcelain insulators.

“The Rochester area has always been big in this sector of the market and successful, but it is not one that’s talked about (as being) nearly as exciting as photonics and solar, probably,” Johnson said.

The emergence of new technologies and materials — products such as plastic, fiberglass rods and silicon rubber — have transformed the market, which is still growing, said Ira Knickerbocker, CEO of Victor Insulators.

“The use of electric insulators is actually still growing,” Knickerbocker said. “The use of porcelain insulators is growing primarily in the substation area. Lapp is very strong in that; we are also very active in that. But a lot of the growth is being filled with imports.”

Competition nearly forced Victor Insulators to close its 280,000-square-foot plant and lay off about 90 workers.

Today, just Victor Insulators, Lapp Insulators and Baltimore-based NGK Locke Inc. supply porcelain insulators. All three trace their roots back to Fred Locke, Knickerbocker said.

Meanwhile, Lapp survived through a series of strategic moves that saw ownership change a few times, starting in 1999, when a management-led team bought the company and later acquired the $30 million insulator business of ceramic components maker CeramTec.

That team then sold 75 percent of the company to New York City-based private equity firm Andlinger & Co., which allowed Lapp to grow further after buying plants in Germany, Poland and Romania to grow sales outside of the U.S.

“We knew we had to continue to grow through a tough five-year period,” said Johnson, referring to the beginning of the millennium. “We needed to raise capital.”

German private equity firm Quadriga Capital bought Lapp and moved the firm’s headquarters to Wunsiedel, Germany, before it finalized the deal with Pfisterer earlier this month. Lapp does about $150 million in global revenue, about 25 percent in the U.S. It employs about 1,200 workers globally.

“We’ve done a nice job to sustain the employment level, grow the business by adding more value to the customers, and we see that strategy as being a good, profitable one for the company and helping to stabilize the employment base in Genesee County,” Johnson said. “I feel really good about it for our employees and customers because it is more of a long-term stable structure.”