Company Announcements

Air Liquide acquired Pure Helium, a supplier of liquid and gaseous helium, helium-based mixtures and argon, with presences in India and the Middle East. Pure Helium has 40 employees and had 2007 revenues of $20 million.

Under a strategic alliance announced in July, Steelcase’s Laboratory Solutions division will integrate Lab Crafters’ fume hood technologies and its marketing, distribution and product development experience, including codistribution of Lab Crafters’ products in North America.

Viaflow commenced US sales and marketing for INTEGRA Biosciences in August, and INTEGRA made an investment in Viaflow.

EMD Chemicals, a Merck KGaA, increased the price of its specialty chemical products by 5%–15% in September.

Engineering supplier Roush Enterprises acquired Nypro’s life sciences division in August, entering the OEM healthcare and laboratory research product markets.

Büchi Labortechnik AG opened a sales office in Vienna, Austria, in September.

LAUDA established a US subsidiary in September with the opening of a LAUDA-Brinkmann facility in Delran, New Jersey. The subsidiary is the largest of the company’s six wholly-owned subsidiaries.

In September, VWR named Eddy Wu senior vice president and president, Asia-Pacific. He was most recently president and CEO of Momentive Performance Materials, Asia-Pacific.

Advanced Instruments acquired D&F Control Systems, a manufacturer of milk preservative products and somatic cell dyes, in October.

Under an agreement signed in October, CSC will provide VWR with infrastructure support for VWR’s operations in China, India and Singapore.

In November, JnetDirect, a software solutions company, acquired Sunergia, a supplier of software and lab equipment, in order to expand its presence in the biosciences market.

Product Introductions

Waters introduced the PoraPak Rxn syringe-barrel cartridges for medicinal chemistry labs.

Waters released the DisQuE Dispersive Sample Preparation Kit, a solid phase extraction (SPE) kit for LC/MS screening of pesticide residues in food.

Waters introduced the Oasis HLB Disk for sample preparation for water and soil analysis.

Agilent launched the SampliQ SPE product line, which replaces the AccuBONDII product line.

RTS Life Science introduced the RTS A2, a modular automated storage system, featuring a capacity of up to 76,800 microtubes or 1,000 plates.

In November, Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced validation services for its laboratory equipment.