Instrument News

May 2013 – content

Life Sciences

Roche reorganisation to stunt life science sequencing business

Tecan sales suffer in Europe

Thermo Fisher buys Life Technologies

PacBio in dept financing round

Analytik Jena buys UV product company

Avacta launches compact Optim instrument

Agilent makes investment in gene synthesis firm

Life Tech buys distributor, expands facility

Leica businesses acquires Brazilian distributor

General Laboratory

Metrohm enters markets for NIR instrumentation

Hanna opens Swiss office

Analytik Jena increases stake in R&D and manufacturing firm

Successful year 2012 for Foss

Halma expands fluid technology interest

BAS closes UK laboratory

Knauer celebrates anniversary year with product launches

Izon signs distributor for French market

Microsaic signs OEM partner

Process & hand-held

908 Devices signs partnership with investment organisation

SciAps buys portable Raman analyser business

Intertek adds four more businesses

Xylem relocates headquarters

ForteBio purchase price revealed

Financials

Cuts in public research budgets hit life science firms

Gerresheimer hit by budget cuts

GE held back by weakness in developed markets

BD returns to growth on solid US instrument sales

Further slowdown from Biotage

General lab firms struggle against market headwinds

Horiba looks to growth in 2013

Corning Life Sciences revenues spike on BD acquisition

Skyray returns to growth in Q4

AJ dissatisfied with a small first quarter loss

Shimadzu lowers full-year guidance on weak markets

Weak markets hit process instrument firms in Q1

Pall offsets industrial weakness with strong life science demand

Roper beats on earnings and raises guidance

Supply issues continue to hit sales at API

Parker-Hannifin slips in a challenging climate

Appointments

April 2013 – content

Life Sciences

EKF Diagnostics to target companion diagnostics

HBIO to spin out business unit

Hologic sells Lifecodes business

NuSep divests proteomics data analysis software

OriGene raises series C funding

CGI acquisition finally completed                                                     

QIAGEN launches sample-to-result NGS workflow

IntegenX signs UAE partner

TAP Biosystems enters three cell culture agreements

Innopsys parters for RPPA

General Laboratory

CAMAG couples TLC with MS

Konik becomes Advion distributor for South America

Anton Paar looks back at decade of growth

Danaher sells its share of tools business

Shimadzu opens Taiwan office

API adds product lines through acquisition

EAR takes on handheld XRF

Analytik Jena opens French subsidiary

Phase Focus finds TEM partner for ‘virtual lens’                            

USPTO rules for Biotage in SNAP infringement claim

XEI Scientific awarded patent

Process & handheld instrumentation

SWS licenses out single-chip spectrometer

Xenemetrix launches XRF for marine vessels

Gasmet buys German partner

Features

Four start-ups win Pittcon Editors’ Awards 2013

Optofluidics - Overcoming limits of traditional optical tweezers

Senova - pH measurement for laboratories and cows’ stomachs

French and US research expertise underpin Apix

All-round interferometer for mobile applications

Philadelphia proves perfect home for strongest Pittcon in years

Trade data

Solid export growth for EU instrument firms

Financials

Government funding cuts hold back life science firms

Strong instrument sales and guidance give Qiagen a boost

Nanosphere doubles revenues

OEM sales boost Tecan

Harvard sales drop on sluggish market

Cepheid back in the black in Q4

Biotech demand boost Merck

Transgenomic drops to a loss

Currency effects and sluggish markets hit lab firms

VWR drops to fourth quarter loss

Techne hit by weak US demand

Global nanotool demand drives OI

Loss for IDEX on impairment charges

Showo Denko optimistic ahead

Tosoh grows instrument sales

Sigma hit by currency

Process firms navigate mixed markets

Stable analysis sales for Pfeiffer

Mesa boosted by Bios purchase

ABB sluggish, but orders benefit from project wins

Honeywell’s efforts to control costs pay off despite weak markets

Intevac to slash workforce

Newport plunges in to the red

INFICON grows strongly in Q4

Appointments

What is the reason for the Pittcon Editors’ Award?

Consider the challenge: An exhibition hall covered with exhibition booths large and small, accommodating the technologies of over 1000 different companies, stakeholders in the global analytical instrument market, estimated at over $60 billion annual revenues.

A large number of the exhibiting businesses will be developers and manufacturers of analytical instruments, and inventors and suppliers of technologies and parts essential for the production and running of analytical instruments. As every technology market, the analytical instrument market lives from the ingenuity of scientists and engineers to develop new technologies, which make the analytical experiments more precise, by achieving lower detection thresholds or increase reproducibility of repeated experimental runs, or to reduce the price and the environmental impact of single analytical procedures.

All these innovative teams presenting at Pittcon are vying for the attention of an audience to improve the practice of analytical chemistry to make this world we live in a better and safer place. Not only is the number of new technologies launched year after year staggering, but even more overwhelming are the many different applications, where these instruments and technologies might be used: from life science research, drug discovery and clinical diagnostics, to routine monitoring of the quality of manufactured goods or the continuous measurement of air and water quality.

A single attendee, trying to find the three best instruments or new technologies at a Pittcon exhibition will find it impossible to visit each and every booth, discuss in-depth the merits of the new developments and then make up his or her mind. Very likely, they will have to limit themselves to a certain group of technologies or focus on a small slice of applications. This, however, does not really reflect the overall impact of Pittcon for the markets of analytical instruments.

This is why over the last seventeen years all technology journalists accredited at Pittcon have been invited to select their three top choices from the new instrument launches at the annual exhibition. From this large number of nominations, an independent and self-assembled group of industry and technology observers picked the overall three winning instruments and technologies, after having discussed the novelty of approach or the possible market impact.

Over the years these top choices have included new developments of established technologies, particularly in the field of mass spectrometry and its coupling with other separation methods, a leading growth driver of the analytical instrument market over the last 20 years. However, they have also featured new concepts for the measurement challenges, for examples new particle analysers, such as the Affinity Biosensor from Archimedes or the IG-1000 from Shimadzu, or a Raman spectrometer that is able to also establish the topography of the area the spectrum was taken (WITec).

However, winners did not have to be fully-fledged analytical instruments. A number of elected developments were in the field of consumable handling, such as the Meltfit column connector (Nlisis) or a method to part-automate filtration and sample preparation, the Samplicity from Merck Millipore.

It is this overview of the analytical instrument industry that is the aim of these independent awards. They might hint at technology trends, but most important of all they show the industry at its most creative and inventive, give a snapshot of what the ingenuity of the engineering brains in its constituent businesses can produce.

­March 2013 – content

Life Sciences

Illumina sued over its rejection of Roche bid

Lonza restructures business units

BioCision raises funds for growth

Labcyte raises funds for portfolio expansion

Illumina sells stake in deCode Genetics

Sphere Fluidics raises additional funds

Avia seeks partners for isothermal formulation testing platform

Affymetrix signs license agreement

Stratos Genomics achieves technical milestone

General Laboratory

Nanoink closes doors                                                             

Techcomp expands European foothold with acquisition      

ICL finalises integration of FTIR gas-cell company

Anton Paar opens direct offices                                            

Eurofins makes 11 purchases in 12 months

Konica buys light testing companies

HORIBA in collaboration targeting drug formulations

Quantachrome Japan opens doors

Halma restructures business

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Life Tech expand capabilities in affinity purification

Sartorius signs exclusive agreement on in-line biosensors

OI re-signs Canadian partner

Features

2012 M&A activities increase, but transaction prices decrease

US record lowest growth since the crisis

Financials

Life Science firms beat estimates in strong Q4

Bio-Rad beats despite fall in profits

Ion Torrent boosts Life Tech

Affymetrix to cut costs and jobs after solid Q4

Illumina boosted by unit sale

Diagnostics drive Danaher LSD

Luminex tops estimates

Many lab firms impress in Q4 but worries remain

Thermo Fisher grows diagnostics

Weak EU holds back MT

FEI beats despite life science slide

Waters positive after sluggish year

Agilent stock dips on earnings

Bruker surges on revenue beat

PerkinElmer narrow losses

Cost-cutting improves profitability for process firms

Danaher grows on water analysis and Chinese acquisition

Acquisitions boos Teledyne

Newly streamlined FLIR returns to profit

Xylem sinks on sluggish markets

Ametek stock jumps on record Q4

Grace stock hits all-time high

Appointments

Welcome to Pittcon 2013

Without the competition of generalist exhibitions such as Analytica and ACHEMA – as in 2012 - and having chosen Philadelphia as a conference location, Pittcon 2013 has all the vestiges of an audience success. Only the final tally will show, whether this hope has been fulfilled, even without the exhibition presence of Agilent and PerkinElmer. Watch the April issue for the answers …

The Instrument News team is starting our IN Leaderboard survey, which aims of listing over 500 companies by revenues for financial 2012. Please visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XTDHDDN so that your company can be in the IN Leaderboard in our July issue. If you would like to voice your opinion about any subject relevant to the analytical instrument industry and want it published in Instrument News, please contact me on [email protected].

February 2013 – content

Life Sciences

Miltenyi opens Nordic office

Promega opens Shanghai facility

IBEX expands enzyme manufacturing

Two developers of robotic platforms combine

Hamilton Storage moves into new US HQ

Integra renames Valdea

AMI becomes distributor for Nexterion products in NA

MML continues to buy GE lines

Pressure BioSciences wins distributor

LGC buys bioanalytical operations from CRO

Illumina acquires Verinata Health

Bio-Rad tanks up on proteins

Hamilton and GE collaborate on card punching workflow

Thermo in metabolomics study

General Laboratory

Oxford Instruments expands into SPM technology

NanoWorld expands AFM probe empire

Ametek adds two businesses

Analytik Jena buys stake in Japanese OEM partner

Nova Capital sells part of Bibby Scientific

Gerresheimer buys Indian packaging firm

OI opens Indian direct office

Schauenburg acquires stake in thermal desorption specialist

HTA expands portfolio of GC headspace autosamplers

Block wins contracts for QCL

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Cemtrex to move away from emission monitoring

Pall invests in instrumentation

Finesse and Thermo Fisher renew supply agreement

Cobalt Expansion Leads to Relocation

Features

Recession in many countries hits instrumentation markets

Financials

Exchange rates cause turbulence for lab firm

Weak US demand and exchange rates continue to BD

Merck Millipore grows on currency

Biotage disappoints as exchange rates hit earnings

Brooks Life Science Systems shows dramatic growth

GE Healthcare sales nosedive in Europe

Currency hurts Gerresheimer

Domestic slowdown hits Olympus

Strong growth for many lab instrument firms

Record year for Porvair Filtration

Alpha MOS losses treble

Strong sales put JEOL in the black

Sluggish spending forces Nikon Instruments to downgrade

Skyray profit suffers on costs

Sartorius ends record year

Andor sees microscope sales fall

Process firms struggle with weak industrial demand

Diploma benefits from acquisitions in solid fiscal year

ATMI benefits from rights buy

Weak industrial orders for Parker-Hannifin

Industrial weakness hits Pall

Mesa grows on Bios acquisition

Roper closes 2012 on a strong note

Weak markets for Olympus

Appointments

January 2013 – content

Life Science News

GE Water & Process sells filters and membrane business

SDIX sells pathogen detection business

BGI receive US security clearance for CGI deal

Definiens closes private funding round

CLC bio makes first company acquisition

New division and cost reduction measures at SDI

Affymetrix sells off eBioscience product line

NanoString completes financing

Roche and PSS to automate NGS sample prep

Life Tech partners with Chinese proteomics firm

Agilent adopts NimbleGen users

General Lab News

Thermo Fisher buys NMR assets

ATFilms and Precision Photonics combine

WITec signs two more distributors

Carl Zeiss sells majority of optronics business

Techcomp expands ownerships, while revenues spike

Horiba opens new European headquarters

Advion integrates CMS into LC portfolio of large supplier

Wheaton adds chromatography consumables lines

Semrock reaches sales milestone

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Advanced Holdings moves into new Shanghai facility

Spectris sells UV curing business

Ecotech becomes distributor of PTR-MS

Xylem expands its dewatering pump interest

Financials

Life science firms impress in above-target quarter

Litigation settlement drives Cepheid into the red

Transgenomic hit by costs

Eurofins sails over growth targets

Bio-Rad beats on earnings despite currency headwinds

Consumables drive Sartorius

Sequenom stock soars on outlook

Harvard jumps on IPO news

Poor markets and exchange rates hound lab firms

Agilent warns of slow growth ahead

Shimadzu invests in growth

Markets worsen for HORIBA

VWR back in the red as sales slip

Showa Denko to invest in Shodex

AJ beats on sales

Sigma stung by currency

Security firms continue to bask in healthy markets

Analogic blames weak hospital spending for sluggish quarter

Intevac turn in record quarter

Acquisitions benefit Xylem

HAPSITE growth hit by timing issues

Spectris on track through purchases

Demand returns to Implant Sciences

Additions lift SPX

Appointments

December 2012 – content

Life Sciences

Bio-Rad to enter flow cytometry market

Life Tech buys microscopy partner

PerkinElmer invests in Chinese diagnostics company

Helicos files for bankruptcy protection

Accelrys buys process intelligence company

Illumina confirmed as bidder for its rival

Avacta expands Asian reach

Illumina receives validity judgment in case against GCI

Agilent to co-operate with bioinformatics company

Idaho Technology rebrands                                                                       

General Lab News

Ahlstrom invests in laboratory filtration assets

Sigma-Aldrich to benefit from Corning’s acquisition

VWR buys UK lab supplier

Chata Biosystems expands manufacturing capabilities

Newport acquires vibration isolation specialist

Spark secures partners for SPE technology

Thermo Fisher finds buyer for lab furniture business

McCrone becomes distributor for JEOL Benchtop SEM

Freeman expands Asian distribution deal                                               

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Spectris buys NIR process and remote sensing company

Areva in discussions to sell Canberra

Cobalt Light to found US office                                                           

Financials

Weak markets and exchange rates hit some Life Science firms

Luminex lowers guidance on miss

Danaher slips on exchange rates

Fluidigm grows on single-cell genomics

Purchase boosts Affymetrix in translational medicine

Illumina narrows guidance despite strong sales

Life Tech keeps earnings growing

Qiagen holds firm on guidance

Lab firms impress despite challenging markets

Thermo Fisher raises guidance

Idex grows on acquisitions

MT struggles as markets soften

FEI ahead of Wall Street targets

Expenses hit Corning’s profit

Bruker raises guidance

Sluggish market hit Waters

Chip slumps continues to affect process control firms

Ametek grows with acquisitions

Newport cuts costs

Europe and US drive Danaher

FLIR continues to streamline

Grace hit by European weakness

Acquisitions boost Teledyne

MKS cautious as markets weaken

Features

Encouraging signs of growth for EU firms

Appointments

November 2012 – content

Life Sciences

Life Tech buys cancer bioinformatics company

Arrayjet opens US office

Thermo Fisher completes purchase

Bruker expands preclinical imaging capabilities

Illumina acquires IVF screening company

Eppendorf UK opens new HQ

Promega loses out on Life Tech damages

Tecan signs four co-marketing agreements

Protea signs new distributors

General Laboratory

Merger creates new optical spectroscopy business

Netzsch buys Japanese thermal analysis business

TOPTICA opens additional US office

WITec opens foreign offices

HTT merger with SII Nanotechnology delayed

Excelitas adds power supply company

CrossLab initiative to cover HPLC

HTT and FEI settle FIB dispute

Further expansion for m-u-t Group

Intertek invests in NDT sector

MKS purchases RF company

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Smiths Detection opens location and signs technology partnership

Spectro becomes distributor of choice

Novasep invests in API production sites

Features

Lab markets continue to stagnate as economy worsens

Financials

Weak US market hits forecasts for life science firms

Gerresheimer cautious about outlook for the US lab sector

Eurofins raises guidance

BD drops guidance on currency

Merck Millipore grows on exchange rates and acquisitions

Biotage sees results spike

Enzo cuts staff and facilities

Roche hit by funding shortfall

Olympus hit by Asian weakness

Biohit more cautious on outlook

General lab firms cut outlook as economy worsens

Agilent cuts guidance in weak Q2

VWR returns to profit

Showa Denko goes into red

AJ optimistic due to Asian demand

Shimadzu lowers outlook

Weak pharma hits Sigma-Aldrich

HORIBA lowers guidance

Bruker’s earnings disappoint

Skyray sales plunge once more

Waters earnings drop on cost

Solid results as process firms defy the economy

Weak international demand hits Parker-Hannifin

API drops to loss on stagnant sales

Analogic doubles profit on sales

Pall impresses as supply issues are overcome

Roper’s stock soars on strong earnings and acquisitions

MOCON falls to loss on acquisition costs

Teradyne beats on sales again

Renishaw invests for growth

Appointments

October 2012 – content

Life Sciences

Merck buys cell-culture media specialist

Danaher further expands its diagnostics interest

Life Tech in companion diagnostics deal

Roper acquires clinical information systems Sunquest

BGI to acquire its own NGS platform

BD buys polymer dyes company

Synthetic Genomics buys patent portfolio

Sony DADC in partnership with its parent

Agilent signs two MS co-marketing deals

Bluechiip signs evaluation and early access customer

Correction to Silverquant technology ownership

Stemgent expands stem cell research portfolio

General Lab

Block Engineering signs distributor

Agilent buys SFC assets to offer single-vendor solution

Phenomenex completes Wibby buy with subsidiary foundation

FEI Buys 3D Visualization Software Company

Brandywine Photonics wins first foreign distributor

Microsaic and Biotage launch MS-flash chromatography

Hybrid launches mixed-field analyser

Acal to concentrate on specialist electronics and photonics

Wyatt holds Light Scattering Colloquium

Linkam celebrates 30^th anniversary

VWR makes three more acquisitions

Process & hand-held instrumentation

Tribogenics raises funds for X-ray source development

Modcon finds US representative

Parker expands expertise in biopharma manufacturing

SpectraFluidics Inc launches OEM product

­­

Features

EMC2012: combined show proves a major draw

US Trade figures show spending pressures

Financials

Exchange rates hold back US life science firms

Sartorius raises guidance

WaferGen cuts sales staff

Bio-Rad down on currency

Strong Swiss Franc hits Integra

GE flat as European headwinds bite

Harvard maintains guidance

Record turnover for Transgenomic

Sequenom misses on sales

Laboratory instrument firms disappoint on outlook

IDEX lowers guidance

MT flat as markets soften

Thermo tops estimates in Q2

Materials drive growth for FEI

Corning profit hit by acquisition

PerkinElmer confirms target

Judges Scientific sinks to a loss

Weak European demand hits many process firms

SPX Flow Technology boosts organic growth

KLA turns in flat quarter

Implant Sciences suffers

Spectris grows despite worsening environment

INFICON up on strong security markets

Intevac photonics sales slump in the double-digits

Xylem lowers guidance

Appointments