Company Announcements

Avacta appointed Isogen Life Sciences as the distributor of its Optim 1000 in mainland Europe.

Ghent University, the University of Antwerp and BioTools Europe partnered to create the European Center for Chirality, which opened on December 2.

ASD named Mapping Solutions as a new distributor for the Middle Eastern remote-sensing market.

Centice entered a strategic partnership in October for Mustard Tree Instruments to sell a modified version of its verification system into the at-line pharmaceutical-manufacturing market.

ChemImage formed Gateway Analytical, an analytical testing company, in October.

Advanced Photonix announced an agreement in principle with In-Q-Tel to engineer a low-cost terahertz anomaly detection device for the security market.

In November, Renishaw confirmed a legal action in the Tokyo District Court alleging that Nanophoton’s RAMAN-11 and RAMANplus laser Raman microscopes infringe its Japanese Patent No. 3,377,209, which protects the EasyConfocal feature of its inVia Raman microscopes.

Datacolor’s fiscal 2010 revenues grew 16.2% to CHF 59.5 million ($56.4 million) (see page 12). Industrial Business Unit sales rose 24% to CHF 32.7 million ($31.0 million).

Product Introductions

Büchi Labortechnik AG introduced the NIRMaster, a stand-alone FT-NIR spectrometer for the food and feed industries for at-line applications.

ND Infrared Engineering launched the InfraLab e-Series Multi-component At-line Food Analyzer, which uses NIR to measure moisture, oil/fat and protein.

Block Engineering released a family of spectrometers based on widely tunable quantum cascade lasers (QCL): LaserScan, which can analyze surface chemistries from a distance of 6 in. to 2 ft.; LaserScope, which is a high-performance IR microscope; and LaserTune, which is a tunable QCL source used by researchers.

Thermo Fisher Scientific launched the Thermo Scientific Nicolet iS5, an entry-level FT-IR spectrometer.

Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced the new DXR/SERS (surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy) Analysis Package, featuring the DXR family of Raman spectrometers and SERS substrates.

ASD launched the FieldSpec HandHeld 2 portable spectroradiometer, which utilizes NIR spectroscopy, with a wavelength range of 325–1075 nm and 3 nm resolution.

Forston Labs introduced the NavSpec Plus affordable spectrophotometer and fluorometer. It has a range of 380–950 nm and 2.5 nm resolution.

Centice released the PINPONT Rx drug identification system based on Raman spectroscopy for assisting doctors and pharmacists in rapidly identifying pills.