Daicel Acquires Chiral Column Company
According to the UK Office of Fair Trading, Chromtech’s 2007 sales totaled less than £5 million ($10 million). The Office approved the merger, citing the differentiation of the companies’ products and the entry of other companies into the market for chiral columns due to the expiration of certain patents.
Illkirch Cedex, France 1/5/09—Chiral Technologies Europe, a wholly owned subsidiary of Daicel Chemical Industries that supplies phases, columns and services for enantioselective chromatography, has acquired ChromTech. Based in Congleton, UK, ChromTech provides protein-based columns for reversed-phase HPLC in three phases. “ChromTech’s specialty line of protein-based columns adds a complimentary product range to our Daicel polysaccharide-based products,” stated Dieter Heckmann, president of Chiral Technologies Europe. According to Chiral Technologies, ChromTech’s columns are for use with highly water-soluble molecules, while its columns are more suited to compounds of higher lipophilicity. Chiral Technologies’ US business will distribute the columns in the Americas.
