Company Announcements

For the first six months, sales for Mettler-Toledo‘s Laboratory business grew 6% excluding currency to roughly $533 million to account for 46% of revenues. First and second quarter Laboratory sales advanced 7% and 6% excluding currency, respectively. Sales growth was driven by increased demand and favorable pricing for analytical instruments and laboratory balances.

Halma named Roy Twite, executive director at IMI, to its Board in July. Norman Blackwell and Steve Marshall resigned from the Board.

For the fiscal year ending March 29, Halma Environmental & Analysis sales grew 9.3%, 5% organically, to £166.5 million ($264.4 million) to account for 25% of sales (see IBO 6/15/14). Sales in the US, UK, Europe and Other grew 4%, 53%, 6% and 3% to make up 40%, 20% 16% and 7% of segment revenue, respectively. Asia Pacific sales declined 5%. UK sales increased 24% organically. Adjusted segment profit improved 4.5% to £31.7 million ($50.4 million). In April, the company spun off its Ocean Optics China business to form a new subsidiary.

Eppendorf announced in June that Dr. Dirk Ehlers will leave its Executive Board. Dr. Ralf Hermann and Dr. Wilhelm Plüster will join it.

In July, Waters and the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission established a 400 m2 Joint Open Laboratory, which is scheduled to open before year end.

PerkinElmer opened a new head office and Customer Knowledge Center in Milan, Italy, in July.

In July, Illumina named Tina S. Nova, PhD, senior vice president and general manager of its oncology business. She cofounded and was president and CEO of Genoptix.

GE Healthcare Life Sciences second quarter orders grew 10%, according to GE’s conference call.

Bio-Rad Laboratories named Joel McComb, former vice president and general manager of Illumina, to its Board.

Product Introductions

In June, PerkinElmer introduced the ELM air-monitoring service for local air-quality analysis. It is based on metal oxide, electrochemical and light-scattering sensors that detect volatile organic compounds, nitrous oxide, nitrous dioxide, ozone and particulate matter and are deployed by users in nodes tracked by a cloud-based network.

PerkinElmer launched the OneSource Scientific Services, a set of customized scientific workflow solutions consisting of Laboratory Efficiency Consulting, Lab Support, Instrument Check, Instrument Concierge and Scientific Support.

Sales/Orders of Note

CareDx, a firm focused on noninvasive surveillance solutions for transplant recipients, signed in June a multiyear supply agreement with Illumina for sequencing, microarrays and consumables.