Company Announcements

FEI’s 2009 sales declined 3.6% to $577.3 million (see IBO 3/31/10). Electronics sales fell 16.9%, Research and Industry Sales declined 3.0%, Life Sciences sales grew 15.5%, and Service and Components revenue was flat to make up 22%, 40%, 14% and 24% of sales, respectively.

Veeco Instruments’ 2009 sales declined 14.2% to $380.1 million (see IBO 4/15/10). Metrology revenue, which included sales of atomic force microscopes (AFMs)/scanning probe microscopes (SPMs), fell 23.6% to $97.7 million.

Asylum Research named Micra Nanotecnologia a distributor for Mexico, Central America and Argentina.

Advanced Technologies Center will undertake a RUB 387 million ($13 million) project, partly funded by state company RUSNANO, to develop moderately priced FemtoScan SPMs, with an aim of producing 300 instruments in 2015. Over half of the systems are expected to be purchased by Russian firms.

In March, Olympus America named Leeds Precision Instruments a distributor of Industrial Microscope products in the Midwest, Mountain States and Texas.

Olympus America appointed B&B Microscopes as its exclusive industrial microscope distributor for Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia and Delaware. Hunt Optics and Imaging now represents the company in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

Carl Zeiss agreed to acquire Imaging Associates (IMAS), the exclusive UK distributor of its materials microscopy products. IMAS had 2009 sales of over £3 million ($5 million).

Product Introductions

Olympus introduced the xcellence live cell–imaging systems: the cell^TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy) module, the cell^FRAP (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching) system and the cell^SPIN bright-laser spinning-disk confocal microscopy system.

Olympus launched the VivaView Multi-Gas incubator microscope, a long-term live-cell incubation and imaging system.

Andor Technology introduced the cost-effective Revolution DSD (differential spinning disk) fully integrated white-light confocal system, which fits the side port of any microscope.

Veeco released the mid-priced Dimension Edge AFM, featuring a closed-loop and drift-compensated stage.

Hiden Analytical released the SIMS/SNMS (secondary ion MS/sputtered neutral MS) Workstation, designed for both static and dynamic measurement.

Leica Microsystems launched the Dual-Core 3D Measuring Microscope, which combines confocal microscopy, interferometry and color imaging in one sensor head.

Leica released the HCS A High Content Screening Automation package for confocal research microscopes.