Company Announcements

In 2010, sales for Roche Diagnostics Applied Science were flat at CHF 868 million ($835 million), but grew 4% in local currencies, to make up 8% of Roche Diagnostics revenue. Genomic Analysis, Custom Biotech and Other sales grew 17%, 13% and 4%, respectively, but qPCR & Nucleic Acid Purification sales fell 12%. Asia-Pacific sales grew 15%. In February, Gilson opened a UK operation in Luton for its pipettes, automation and HPLC products.

Laboratory sales for Mettler-Toledo increased 15% in 2010, with acquisitions contributing 2% to growth, to make up 46% of company sales. Fourth-quarter 2010 Laboratory revenue grew 17% in local currency.

Corning Life Sciences’ 2010 sales increased 38.8% to $508 million (see IBO 3/31/11) to account for 8% of company sales.

Excluding acquisitions, Life Sciences sales increased 7%. Two distributors made up 37% of segment sales. In 2011, segment revenue is expected to grow 15%.

In February, Life Technologies awarded the Center for Human Identification at the UNT Health Science Center a three-year, $3.5 million grant to train researchers in forensic DNA analysis techniques.

In February, Life Technologies launched a regional distribution hub in Singapore. The 62,300-sq.-ft. Asia Distribution Center serves as the regional hub for product distribution throughout Asia, excluding Japan.

HORIBA announced a new Mid-Long Term Management Plan beginning in 2011. Targets for the Scientific and Process & Environmental segments in 2015 are sales of ¥24,000 million ($273 million) and ¥16,000 million ($182 million), respectively, and operating income of ¥1,500 million ($17 million) for each segment. The target for company sales in 2015 is ¥150,000 million ($1,708 million). The company’s focus areas include water quality–related products, a customer-oriented business model, and establishment of a global development and production system.

In February, Sigma-Aldrich announced that Frank Wicks, president of Research, assumed responsibility for the entire portfolio of Research products. David Smoller, formerly president of Research Biotech, was appointed CSO. Gerrit van den Dool was promoted to vice president and managing director, US and Canada Region.

Effective April 1, GE Healthcare promoted Kieran Murphy, head of Global Commercial Operations for Life Sciences, to president and CEO of Life Sciences. He succeeds Peter Ehrenheim, who retired.

Hitachi High-Technologies named Masao Hisada president and CEO, effective April 1. He had served as representative executive officer, executive vice president, executive officer and director. He will continue to serve as representative executive officer and director.

Techcomp’s 2010 revenues increased 21.2% to $127.1 million (see IBO 3/31/11 and page 12). Distribution sales grew 2.9% to 69% of sales. Manufacturing sales increased 99.8%. Gross profit margin increased from 28.5% in 2009 to 32.5% in 2010. Sales to China grew 13.2% to $91.9 million.