Company Announcements

In April, FEI announced plans to relocate the manufacture of its Small DualBeam product line from Eindhoven, the Netherlands to its facility in Brno, Czech Republic. The move will take nine months, affect 50 employees and involve products with around $60 million in annual revenue. After the move, all Small DualBeam manufacturing will be located in the Czech Republic.

Olympus Canada announced in April that it will exclusively distribute Hitachi High-Technologies’ TM3000 Table Top scanning electron microscope (SEM) in Canada.

Andor Technologies acquired Photonic Instruments in April for $5.0 million in cash and the issue of 152,627 ordinary shares at 2p ($0.03) each. Photonic develops and manufactures laser- and lamp-based illumination and ablation systems, and had 2009 revenues of $3.0 million.

Strand Life Sciences signed an exclusive license agreement with 100X Imaging in April to develop and market microscopy-image meta-data management technology.

AMETEK Materials Analysis Division established an Atom Probe Technology Center in Madison, Wisconsin at the headquarters of Imago Scientific Instruments.

Carl Zeiss’s Microscopy Group sales for the half year ended March 31 increased 4% to €191 million ($234 million), or 14% company revenues.

Park Systems named LOT-ORIEL as its distributor for the UK and Ireland.

In May, Park Systems opened a European Applications Center at the Schaefer GmbH office in Langen, Germany.

Product Introductions

JEOL released thin-film phase plate technology for its transmission electron microscopes for phase-contrast cryo imaging.

Olympus introduced cellSens microscope imaging software, featuring an easy-to-customize interface. It is available in Entry, Standard or Dimension versions.

Veeco Instruments launched Sharp Nitride Lever Probes for use on any atomic force microscope (AFM).

In April, FEI introduced the Helios NanoLab x50 DualBeam Series, which integrates the XHR SEM with the Tomahawk focused ion beam for applications in failure analysis, 3D nanoscale characterization and nanoprototyping.

Leica Microsystems released Leica HCS A, a high-content screening automation packages for its confocal research microscopes.

In May Leica Microsystems launched its True Confocal/True Value Program, offering the Leica TCS SPE II Spectral Confocal with a upright microscope, objective lens set, three laser lines and computer for less than $100,000.

Agilent launched the 6000ILM AFM, which integrates the capabilities of an AFM with those of an inverted light microscope or an inverted confocal microscope.