Essen BioScience, a cell-based assays and instrumentation used for drug discovery and basic research applications, is being acquired from SFW Capital Partners, a specialised private equity firm that invests in mid-sized businesses providing analytical tools and related services.
Sartorius will purchase Essen BioScience for $320m in cash. Having achieved strong double-digit growth during the past few years, Essen expects to generate sales revenues of approximately $60m in 2017 with continued strong levels of operating profitability.
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA) and with sales entities in the UK and Japan, the company currently employs approximately 150 people.
Through this acquisition, Sartorius will significantly expand its portfolio for bioanalytics, a field the company has recently entered via the IntelliCyt acquisition in 2016.
“With the Essen real-time, live-cell analysis platform, we will add another key technology for advancing and accelerating drug discovery applications to our lab divisions’ portfolio”, said Joachim Kreuzburg, CEO of Sartorius.
“This powerful technology offers important synergies with our IntelliCyt business. Going forward, Sartorius will be able to provide our customers the broadest and, we believe, the most innovative portfolio for cell analysis in the industry.”
Brett Williams, the President and CEO of Essen, said: “This is a great opportunity to to continue development and introduction of transformative solutions for life sciences.”
“We believe that the combination with Sartorius will provide exceptional opportunities for sustained growth and development for our employees, customers and business partners.”
The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2017.
