Sartorius will acquire U.S.-based Essen BioScience Inc., a leader in the field of cell-based assays and instrumentation used for drug discovery and basic research applications. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2017.
Sartorius will purchase Essen BioScience for $320 million in cash. Having achieved strong double-digit growth during the past few years, Essen expects to generate sales revenues of about $60 million in 2017 with continued strong levels of operating profitability. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and with sales entities in the UK and Japan, the company currently employs approximately 150 people.
Through this acquisition, Sartorius says it will significantly expand its portfolio for bioanalytics, a field the company has recently entered via the IntelliCyt acquisition in 2016. "With the Essen real-time, live-cell analysis platform, we will add another key technology for advancing and accelerating drug discovery applications to our lab divisions’ portfolio", said Joachim Kreuzburg, CEO of Sartorius. "This powerful technology offers important synergies with our IntelliCyt business. Going forward, Sartorius will be able to provide our customers the broadest and, we believe, the most innovative portfolio for cell analysis in the industry."
