Audax Private Equity is buying EnviroVac Holdings LLC, an industrial cleaning and maintenance service provider, from private equity firm RLJ Equity Partners LLC. Founded in 1999, EnviroVac offers general industrial services such as hydro-blasting, outage and turnaround, vacuum, hydro evacuation, dust remediation, and 40K cutting services. The Savannah, Georgia-based also offers chemical cleaning services for package boilers, oxygen systems, recovery boilers, filtration projects and turbines. EnviroVac serves the power & utilities, pulp & paper, chemical, steel and manufacturing industries in the Southeast U.S. region. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Audax, a Boston private equity firm, backs lower middle-market companies with up to $35 million in Ebitda. Audax has been rather busy recently. In May, the PE firm combined two companies to form an automotive aftermarkets parts distributor called APC Automotive Technologies. Audax also raised a $1.6 billion senior loan fund to target business services and consumer product deals in October 2016. The firm won Mergers & Acquisitions’ 2015 Mid-Market Award for Private Equity Firm of the Year. RLJ is a middle-market investment firm based in Bethesda, Maryland. The firm, founded by BET (Black Entertainment Television) founder Robert L. Johnson, typically targets investments in the hotel, private equity, financial services and entertainment industries. In the summer of 2016, the media mogul partnered with Roth Capital Markets to form a new investment bank called RLJ Capital Markets. In that same year, AMC Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: AMCX) invested $65 million in RLJ Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: AMCX), and also sold marketing analytics company MarketCast LLC. In 2014, RLJ’s real estate arm bought the DoubleTree Grand Key Resort in Key West, Florida. Houlihan Lokey Inc. (NYSE: HLI) served as financial adviser to EnviroVac, while DLA Piper LLP served as legal counsel. Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal counsel to Audax. 
