Letter to readers · Spring 2026
Cinder Peak Group is a private partnership built to own enduring businesses for the very long term. We were founded in 1987 on the conviction that capital, properly applied, ought to outlive its stewards. Nearly four decades on, we operate quietly across nine industries and four continents — investing where we have an edge, and saying no, often, where we do not.
Our approach is unhurried by design. The businesses we acquire share a common shape: durable demand, modest capital intensity, and management teams that remain in place. We do not hold to a fund cycle. We hold, instead, until the world ends or the thesis breaks — whichever arrives first.
We measure outcomes in decades, not quarters. Our average holding period exceeds twenty-two years.
Our operating companies retain their names, leadership, and culture. Headquarters intervenes rarely, and only on request.
We use little debt and never at the holding level. Liquidity is a feature, not a residual.
The partners' personal capital is invested alongside the firm's. We eat what we cook.
We own twenty-three companies outright and hold significant minority stakes in a further nine. Below are a handful, chosen at random from the shelf.
Precision-machined components for rail, aerospace, and heavy industry. Family-owned for three generations before joining the group in 2003.
Owner-operator of regulated midstream pipelines and four community-scale solar arrays across the upper Midwest.
A purveyor of preserved foods — pickles, mustards, smoked fish — sold under nine heritage labels across North America and Northern Europe.
Long-lease commercial real estate concentrated in secondary North-American cities. We manage the portfolio internally without leverage at the trust level.
Producer of refractory and high-temperature ceramics for steel, glass, and semiconductor fabrication. Six plants. Customers in twenty-three countries.
Independent publisher of regional newspapers, agricultural journals, and a small backlist of literary fiction. Print remains profitable, surprisingly.
We never had a five-year plan. We had a hundred-year plan and the patience to keep it quiet. — Eleanor R. Vance, Founding Partner
We prefer industries that the trade press has forgotten. Stable demand, slow change, and a small number of disciplined competitors.
Founders and family principals who want a buyer rather than an exit. Continuity matters more than price.
Inventory you can touch. Receivables you can age. Free cash flow that survives a credit cycle.
Management who continues with us, ideally with rolled equity. We do not replace what is working.
If the thesis cannot be written on a postcard, we are probably overpaying.
We publish a small newsletter — irregularly, and usually about nothing newsworthy. It is read by our shareholders, our managers, and a handful of patient correspondents.
We are slow correspondents — a typical first conversation takes months — but every letter is read by a partner.
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