https://www.guns.com/news/2020/11/25/ruger-marlin-acquisition-is-complete-to-hit-market-in-2021?11/25/2020 03:20 AM | CHRIS EGER
Ruger on Tuesday announced that their acquisition of the historic Marlin Firearms brand from Remington is complete, and the company is looking forward to producing the iconic line of sporting rifles.
Ruger came out on top in a bidding war in late September as part of Big Green's Chapter 11 auction, held in a federal bankruptcy court. After paying a purchase price of approximately $28.3 million-- drawn from Ruger's available cash on hand not loans-- the latter took delivery of "substantially all of the Marlin Firearms assets" by this week.
"Since we announced the agreement to purchase Marlin in September, we have heard from countless members of the firearms community - consumers, retailers, distributors, writers, and collectors - who are delighted that legendary Marlin rifles are now part of the Ruger product family," said Christopher J. Killoy, Ruger's CEO, in a statement. "We are excited to start moving these assets to our Ruger facilities and setting up the manufacturing cells that will produce Marlin rifles for years to come. We look forward to re-introducing Marlin rifles in the latter half of 2021."
As previously reported by Guns.com, court filings detail that Ruger stood to acquire more than 80 pages of tooling, machines, components, and spare parts needed to produce Marlin firearms as well as related intellectual property, patents, FFLs, domain names, social media pages, and trademarks.
Marlin was formed in 1870 in Connecticut by firearms designer John Mahlon Marlin. While the company produced handguns, shotguns, and machine guns over its existence, as well as bolt- and pump-action rifles, it is in the field of lever-action "cowboy" guns that it made its reputation, cranking out more than 30 million such rifles by 2008. In a statement last month, Ruger made clear the lever guns will be a high priority to reintroduce to the market.
It is unclear which models Ruger will reboot, but either way, fans of the brand will be eagerly anticipating further word.
